Salesforce Docs Portal

Collator Class

Contains methods to get locale-specific instances that can be used for comparisons and sorting. Use the getInstance() method to obtain the Collator instance for a given locale and pass the Collator as the Comparator parameter to the list.sort() method.

Namespace

System

Usage

Because locale-sensitive sorting can produce different results depending on the user running the code, avoid using it in triggers or in code that expects a particular sort order.

Example

This example performs a default list sort and then uses Collator to sort based on the user locale.

@IsTest
    static void userLocaleSort() {
        
        string userLocale = 'fr_FR';
        
        User u = new User(Alias = 'standt', Email='standarduser@testorg.com',
        EmailEncodingKey='UTF-8', LastName='Testing', LanguageLocaleKey='en_US',
        LocaleSidKey=userLocale, TimeZoneSidKey='America/Los_Angeles',
        ProfileId = [SELECT Id FROM Profile WHERE Name='Standard User' WITH USER_MODE].Id,
        UserName='standarduser' + DateTime.now().getTime() + '@testorg.com');
       
        System.runAs(u) {
           
            List<String> shoppingList = new List<String> {
                'épaule désosé Agneau',
                'Juice',
                'à la mélasse Galette 5 kg',
                'Bread',
                'Grocery'
            };
            
            // Default sort
            shoppingList.sort();
            Assert.areEqual('Bread', shoppingList[0]);
            
            // Sort based on user Locale
            Collator myCollator = Collator.getInstance();
            shoppingList.sort(myCollator);
            Assert.areEqual('à la mélasse Galette 5 kg', shoppingList[0]);
            Assert.areEqual('Bread', shoppingList[1]);
            Assert.areEqual('épaule désosé Agneau', shoppingList[2]);
            Assert.areEqual('Grocery', shoppingList[3]);
            Assert.areEqual('Juice', shoppingList[4]);
        }
    }

Collator Methods

The following are methods for Collator.

compare(source, target)

Perform string comparisons for a given locale.

Signature

public Integer compare(String source, String target)

Parameters

Return Value

Type: Integer

getInstance()

Gets the Collator instance for the current user’s locale.

Signature

public static System.Collator getInstance()

Return Value

Type: Collator Class