[Catalyst] Alphabetical Paging based on First Letter

[Ashley]

On Feb 27, 2008, at 3:50 PM, Matt Knesi wrote:
> I would like to implement a page navigation based on the first  
> letter of the items, e.g. first letter of last names, so all last  
> names with 'A' will display when you click on 'A' (instead of page  
> 1) and all last names starting with 'M' appear when you click on  
> 'M' and so on...
>
> Only the initials that are actually present in the database should  
> be displayed for paging navigation, so if there is NO last name  
> starting with 'X', 'X' shouldn't show up in the navigation line.

I've done this with a dictionary application. You could do a  
relationship to a letter. So say name has_one letter, letter has_many  
names. Or what I've done a couple of times is make "letter" a field  
in the target table (word for me, name for you) and just keep the  
letter or "#" for a leading number/special and make it an index so  
it's fast to lookup.

-Ashley