Request: DirectoryTree Natural Sorting

[emroch]

TL;DR: Update DirectoryTree._load_directory() to use natsort.natsorted() or similar in place of sorted(), so paths with numbers are sorted the way humans expect. If controllability/compatibility is desired, add an attribute that pivots between calling the built-in sorted() and some natural-sort algorithm.

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I have been trying all day to get a Tree to sort elements the way I wanted. I initially implemented my own flavor of a DirectoryTree before I realized it already existed. In my implementation, I walked the filesystem and added nodes to the tree manually, which meant I had full control over the sorting. At first I just used sorted() to get a stable view, but ended up adding a key function to sort directories first. Then I noticed that paths with numbers were sorted lexicographically instead of numerically, so I used natsort.natsorted to resolve that.

Then I discovered the DirectoryTree and thought I could eliminate a bunch of unnecessary code, and probably be way more efficient by using it. I did not realize that it performs a sort on the paths while loading, so I was fighting with it to get my naturally sorted directories/files back. Eventually I realized that even if I went back to plain sorted(), the directories stayed above the files! That's when I dug into the source code and found that _load_directory() is calling sorted(filter_paths(...), key=...) which means anything I do to change the order in the filtering function is blown away by this new sorting call.

I then tried a bunch of things to bypass this, but I couldn't get them to work (for example, overriding the _load_directory function). All I really need is for that sorted() call to be natsorted() or similar, and I could just use the native DirectoryTree as-is.

[TomJGooding]

I then tried a bunch of things to bypass this, but I couldn't get them to work (for example, overriding the _load_directory function).

I haven't tested thoroughly, but this seemed to work for me?

from pathlib import Path
from typing import override

from natsort import natsorted
from textual import work
from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import DirectoryTree
from textual.widgets.directory_tree import DirEntry
from textual.widgets.tree import TreeNode
from textual.worker import get_current_worker


class CustomDirectoryTree(DirectoryTree):
    @override
    @work(thread=True, exit_on_error=False)
    def _load_directory(self, node: TreeNode[DirEntry]) -> list[Path]:
        assert node.data is not None
        path = node.data.path
        path = path.expanduser().resolve()
        return natsorted(
            self.filter_paths(self._directory_content(path, get_current_worker())),
            key=lambda path: (not self._safe_is_dir(path), path.name.lower()),
        )


class ExampleApp(App):
    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        yield CustomDirectoryTree(path="./")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = ExampleApp()
    app.run()