Best way to implement “ReOrderable Collection” and Persist it to database

Question

My domain object :

public class MyDomainObject
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int DisplayOrder { get; set         


        

Answer 1

From your examples it seems that you always want the sequence to be without gaps, starting from zero. But this means that removing the first element will require updating the row in the database for every single item in your list. It's simple and it will work (and these are good things) but it's not always ideal. Since you asked for "the best way" without really specifying what you mean by that, allow me to suggest an alternative method:

What really matters with a DisplayOrder is not the actual values but their relative order. If you want to improve performance with the database, you could consider relaxing the requirement that there should be no gaps and then try to find the smallest number of changes to the DisplayOrders to ensure that the correct order is stored, even if gaps are present in the resulting sequence. If you do this then adding, removing or moving a single item will typically only require updating one row in the database, with the exception that occasionally other items will have to be moved to create a gap where an item must be inserted between two others that have consecutive DisplayOrders.

You can also minimize the number of times that a gap is not available by starting with DisplayOrder 100, 200, 300 and later allowing for example an insertion with DisplayOrder 150 in between (or perhaps use a real/float type instead of an integer).

Another advantage of this method is if you use a database data comparison tool to observe changes between the current version of the database and older versions it will be easier to see what modifications have been made to the display order. You will only see changes in the display order of items that have actually been moved by the user, rather than half the list change each time an item is removed. It will also reduce the size of backups if you use an incremental backup strategy.

I'd say though that these advantages are not significant advantages over the naive method for most cases. It depends on your system whether it is worth implementing this system or just keeping it simple. If in doubt, keep it simple. For systems with small lists, few modifications and where you don't care about the change history, overwriting the entire list with new DisplayOrders each time will probably be just fine.