The DESCEND instruction sorts a list of answers (generated from a repeated dialog) in descending order by a specified variable from that dialog.
The DESCEND instruction is only available when you are creating a computation but you can access the same functionality from the Field Editor when you're adding a repeated region in a template.
You can use an DESCEND instruction in a computation to provide the same functionality as the Sort answers by this variable property in the field editor when you select Sort descending. To further sort the list (like using the Then sort answers by this variable property in the field editor) you can add a second DESCEND or ASCEND instruction.
You can only use an DESCEND instruction between a REPEAT instruction and an END REPEAT instruction.
| Instruction name | Model | After you drag and drop the model into the script tab: |
| DESCEND | DESCEND ⟦VAR⟧ | Replace ⟦VAR⟧ with the variable (from the repeated dialog) that you want HotDocs to use to sort the list of answers. |
For the following script, the template author creates two variables and repeated dialog:
Create a text computation with the following script to merge a list of clients in alphabetical order, from Z to A. Even though it lists Client First Name first, it sorts by Client Last Name:
""
REPEAT Client Information
DESCEND Client Last Name
RESULT + Client First Name + " " + Client Last Name + "
"
END REPEAT
The first empty set of quotation marks sets the computation value to nothing. Then, the repeated dialog, Client Information, asks for each client’s first and last name. Next, the DESCEND instruction sorts the list of names by last name. Finally, the RESULT expression tells HotDocs to merge the names in the document.
After you download the example template, you can import the template to any workspace to see this example code in action.