sorting - Django grouping queryset by first letter?

Question

I have a QuerySet like:

items = Item.objects.all()

Item has a 'name' field. In the template I want to show:

• A
• Axes
• Alcohol
• B
• Bazookas
• C
• Coins
• Cartridges
• S
• Swords
• Sparrows

So the items are ordered and group by the first letter. Missing letters are omitted. Does anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

There's a template tag for this, if all you care about is its presentation on the page. First, define an organizational principle in the class. In your case, it's the first letter:

class Item(models.Model):
    ...

    def first_letter(self):
        return self.name and self.name[0] or ''

And then define a regroup in the template, using the first_letter call:

{% regroup items by first_letter as letter_list %}
<ul> 
{% for letter in letter_list %}
  <li>{{ letter.grouper }}
    <ul>
        {% for item in letter.list %}
        <li>{{ item.name }}</li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
  </li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>