unexpected interface ordering behaviour

[bleything]

Issue type: bug report

Python version: 2.7.5
NetBox version: v2.0.1

I've got switches that have ports named 1/g[1-48] and 1/xg[1-4]. No matter how I set the interface ordering, they always display in a specific order that doesn't make sense to me. On the device type page:

On a specific device page:

It's very possible that I am just misunderstanding how this is supposed to work... but I would expect the xgN interfaces to sort to the bottom in alphabetical mode, at the very least. And I'd expect the sorting to change when I change the interface ordering option. Aaaaaaaaand it's pretty weird that xg3 and xg4 sort differently on the device type page vs. the device page.

Is this an actual bug or am I just not understanding what's happening?

[jeremystretch]

This is happening because the intermingled alphabetic characters inside the numeric slot/position are not matched by the regexes we use for ordering. Only the leading "1" is being matched, so the interfaces are essentially unordered.

I'm going to tweak the ordering so that it uses the entire name field as a tiebreaker. This will result in a deterministic order for the names listed above, however it won't be perfect. For example, 1/g11 will be listed before 1/g2 because we're not able to cast the position as an independent integer.

[bleything]

Ah, I guess I expected that when it was set to alphabetic, it would sort the entire string... but you're saying it's just a subset? What's the goal there?

[jeremystretch]

@bleything The name is broken into segments so that we can CAST() and sort on integers to achieve a more natural ordering. Otherwise, we end up with things like:

• ge-0/0/1
• ge-0/0/10
• ge-0/0/11
• ge-0/0/2
• ge-0/0/3

It's not a flawless approach but it's the best we have at the moment.

[bleything]

Ah, got it! Thanks for the explanation. Totally makes sense; it's a complicated kind of thing to order.

[bleything]

Oh, and thanks for the quick fix, too!