Forum OpenACS Q&A: ad_table, OpenACS 4 and XQL files

There is a good example in /packages/general-comments/www/index.tcl.

ad_table takes statement_name as parameter and sql_qry which could be the empty string, I suppose (or, rather, "SQL" to conform with Jun's new guidelines doc).

Also, the "*" after the default sort column in "{orderby {pretty_date*} }" in the declaration section of ad_page_contract is there to tell ad_table that the default sort order should be descending. Leave it out if you want ascending order. This isn't documented IIRC ...

My sql query in my xql file looks like this...

<fullquery name="msg_sql">
  <querytext>
    select id, summary, datefrom messages
    [ad_dimensional_sql $dimensional_list limit limit]
    [ad_order_by_from_sort_spec :orderby :table_def]
  </querytext>
</fullquery>

My table_def looks like this...

set table_def {
    { id "Report" {id $order} {} }
    { summary "Summary" {summary $order} {<td> \
    <a href="summary?[export_vars -url {id}]">$summary</a></td>} c }
    { date "Date" {date $order} {} c }
}

set messages [ad_table -Torderby $orderby msg_sql {} $table_def]

And in the ad_page_contract I have declared the orderby variable as follows...

{ orderby {date} }

I think it is ordering the table based on the date column by default.

Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong with this?  I still haven't been able to sort columns by clicking on the table header.