New setting 'blankSortBy' + minor bug fixes

[colbysargentcodes]

This new setting allows a different sort to be used when the input is
blank. 'initial' sort type does not apply any sorting, so will appear in
the same order as the original select options.

Minor bug fixes as detailed in 'Bug Fixes' commit

[rmm5t]

'initial' sort type does not apply any sorting, so will appear in the same order as the original select options.

Could you help me here and give me some concrete use-cases as to why you'd want to change this default (blank input) sort behavior? Especially, why should score be an option here? Also, if you wanted to sort alphabetically, why not just ensure that your <option> elements are already sorted?

[colbysargentcodes]

Hi,

I used this plug-in (great by the way! thanks!) in a project of mine where the users needed to filter a large list of clients, scoring was the best way to sort these with an appropriate search. When the input was blank, it would still use score (hence ensuring the <option> elements are already sorted doesn't help), and so the returned order seemed very messy and random to them. I think having the results in alphabetical order when no search is provided makes it look a lot neater and friendlier for the user.

Sorting by name/alphabetically was the main purpose when I built this, I only implemented score as the function was already there anyway and to keep options consistent (was also considering suggesting initial as a sortBy option in the in-line comment).

While the vast majority of cases would be better with name or score sorting, I do believe there's the odd case which could make use of it, and since it doesn't even need extra coding, it doesn't exactly hurt. It may help on any select where elements have previously been sorted with its own criteria prior to creating the flexselect. An example that comes to mind could be a list of music albums, previously sorted by date, which may want to keep its order without the need of prepending that information to the option name.

[rmm5t]

Ah! Thanks for the detailed follow-up. This helps a ton, and I'm much more willing to pull this in now.

[rmm5t]

Thanks for this. I just merged it in, but I also added a bit of a refactoring of it. Note the changes here: f00524c

1. Made initial the default blankSortBy setting.
2. Simplified the logic for determining the sortBy behavior at runtime.

[rmm5t]

v0.9.0 released!

[colbysargentcodes]

Looks great! Glad I could contribute.