Grouping entries by title in Craft 3

Question

I need to group a set of entries alphabetically and I don't get a working and clean solution. Taking this documentation entry, I am doing it as follows:

  {% set fromAtoF = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:a* OR A* OR b* OR B* OR c* OR C* OR d* OR D* OR e* OR E* OR f* OR F*') %}
  {% set fromGtoL = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:g* OR G* OR h* OR H* OR i* OR I* OR j* OR J* OR k* OR K* OR l* OR L*') %}
  {% set fromMtoR = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:m* OR M* OR n* OR N* OR o* OR O* OR p* OR P* OR q* OR Q* OR r* OR R*') %}
  {% set fromStoZ = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:s* OR S* OR t* OR T* OR u* OR U* OR v* OR V* OR w* OR W* OR x* OR X* OR y* OR Y* OR z* OR Z*') %}

• Problem 1: I get entries starting by 'A' like 'Amazon' in the fromStoZ group, and 'Walmart' in fromGToL...etc
• Problem 2: It's not clean nor elegant. There must be other ways to query this but I haven't found the good one yet.

I also tried:

  {% set fromAtoF = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:a* OR b* OR title:c* OR title:d* OR title:e* OR title:f*') %}
  {% set fromGtoL = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:g* OR title:h* OR title:i* OR title:j* OR title:k* OR title:l*') %}
  {% set fromMtoR = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:m* OR title:n* OR title:o* OR title:p* OR title:q* OR title:r*') %}
  {% set fromStoZ = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').order('title').search('title:s* OR title:t* OR title:u* OR title:w* OR title:x* OR title:y* OR title:z*') %}

But neither it works; entries like 'Best Buy' and 'JC Penney' don't get into any group, but 'Best Buy2' goes correctly into fromAtoF

Answer 1

Not exactly sure what you are trying to do with this data, but it sounds like you could use the group filter

{% set alphaEntries = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops').all() | group('title | slice(0, 1)') %}

{% for letter, entries in alphaEntries %}
    <h2>{{ letter }}</h2>
    <ul>
        {% for entry in entries %}
            <li>{{ entry.title }}</li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
{% endfor %}

Answer 2

I ended up using a combination of solutions provided:

 {% set groupedShops = craft.entries.section('shops').type('shops')
                    .order('title').all() |
                    group("title|first|upper |
                    replace('/[A-F]/', 'A to F', 1) |
                    replace('/[G-L]/', 'G to L', 1) |
                    replace('/[M-R]/', 'M to R', 1) |
                    replace('/[S-Z]/', 'S to Z', 1)") %}

Then you can do:

  {% for groupName, group in groupedShops %}
      <h1> {{ groupName }} </h1>
      <ul>
        {% for shop in group %}
          <li> {{ shop.title }} </li>
        {% endfor %}
      </ul>
  {% endfor %}

Then you have:

A to F:

• Amazon
• Best Buy

G to L:

• Happy Shops
• Hollister
• Luxe DH

...etc

A very similar query is explained here:

How can I group a list of tags into ranges of first letters (A–E, F–J, etc.)?

Important detail pointed by @Carlcs:

In Craft 3 you need to explicitly query for the entries using all() method on the elment query object