Ordering & Sorting

What ordering does

Ordering determines the display order of features in the card/list view and affects which markers appear first when paginating through results. Choosing the right ordering strategy helps your users find relevant locations faster.

Ordering types

Mapsemble supports two ordering types:

Spatial Distribution (entropy)

Distributes features geographically so the visible results represent a spatial spread rather than clustering in one area. Instead of showing all results from a single region, entropy ordering ensures users see a representative sample of locations across the entire map.

• When to use: This is the recommended default for most maps. It gives users a good overview of all locations without bias toward dense clusters.
• Configuration: No configuration needed — just select the entropy ordering type.

Field Value

Sorts features by a specific field's value in ascending or descending order. This gives you direct control over the list order based on your data.

• When to use: When the order of results matters to your users. For example, sorting by price (low to high), by date (newest first), or alphabetically by name.
• Configuration:
  • Field — Select the field to sort by. Only fields that support ordering can be used (text and number fields).
  • Direction — Choose ascending (A-Z, low to high) or descending (Z-A, high to low).

Adding order-by rules

In the map editor, go to the Order By section. Click to add a new ordering rule and choose either Spatial Distribution or Field Value.

Multiple rules

You can add multiple order-by rules. They are applied in weight order, so the rule with the lowest weight takes highest priority. Subsequent rules act as tiebreakers.

For example, you might:

1. Primary sort by category (ascending) — weight 1
2. Secondary sort by name (ascending) — weight 2

This would group features by category first, then sort alphabetically within each category.

Weight

Each order-by rule has a weight value that controls its priority when multiple rules exist:

• Lower weight = higher priority. A rule with weight 1 is applied before a rule with weight 2.
• Adjust weights to reorder your sorting priorities without removing and re-adding rules.