Order users by company name or last name

gistfile1.rb

# This assumes you have the fields first_name, last_name and company_name on your model User.
#
# If there's a simpler way to do this please let me know. The issue was mostly with how MySQL 
# sorts null values. If you have your order clause as "order by company_name, last_name" then 
# columns with company_name that have null would be first which you don't want, you want it 
# to use the value for last_name instead. You could also do this all in memory in Ruby but 
# when you are also paginating it's easy enough to get your hands dirty with some SQL.

# app/models/user.rb
  named_scope :sorted, :order => "sort_name, first_name ASC", 
    :select => "*, concat(ifnull(company_name,''), ifnull(last_name,'') as sort_name"

  def sort_initial
    "#{company_name}#{last_name}".strip.first.downcase
  end

# app/controllers/users_controller.rb

def index
  @users = User.sorted
end

# app/views/users/index.html.haml
  - @users.group_by(&:sort_initial).each do |sort_initial, users|
    %h2= sort_initial.first.capitalize
    %ul
      - users.each do |u|
        %li= u.display_name