How to output an A-Z list with letters as headings

The CMS Questions
1

Hi there,
This feels like the sort of thing I should be able to work out, but if anybody has a suggestion it would be greatly appreciated! (I’m using Kirby 2 still!)

I have an alphabetical list of people’s names but I need to output a letter for each section as a heading e.g.

A:
Rose Acorn
Adam Adams
Greg Appleby

B:
Simon Bird
Susie Bison

etc etc

Any thoughts much appreciated!

Thanks,
Rach

2

What you need is the group() method:

https://k2.getkirby.com/docs/cheatsheet/pages/group

Your callback would return the first letter of the lastname

3

Ah brilliant, thanks @pixelijn, just what I need!

4

Second question, sorry, is there some way to get the first letter of the lastname easily?

5

Where is the last name stored?

6

It’s in a separate lastname field

7

Using the example from the docs, this would return the first character of the lastname field:

$groupedItems = $page->children()->visible()->group(function($p){
  return str::substr($page->lastname()->value(), 1);
});
8

Ah brilliant, thank you - I ended up with:

$artists = $page->children()->visible()->sortBy('lastname')->group(function($p){
    $lastnamecap = str::ucfirst($p->lastname()->value());
    return str::substr($lastnamecap, 0, 1);
});

Which works perfectly, thanks so much @pixelijn!