Umbraco 13 to 17 | Delivery API default sort has changed

Questions
1

Hi, i’ve noticed the default sort order for the Delivery API has changed from sortOrder to createdDate, is there a way to revert this behavior.

Thanks.

2

Hi @jam ,

There isn’t anything provided directly but we can do few things from our side to achieve this:

  1. The easiest way is to explicitly define the sort order in your front-end fetch requests. If you pass the exact parameter, it overrides the default fallback.

    Just add this to your query string: ?sort=sortOrder:asc

    Example: GET /umbraco/delivery/api/v2/content?sort=sortOrder:asc

  2. The other way which is a server side fix, is to write a decorator for IApiContentQueryProvider. When a request hits the server without any sorting rules, your decorator intercepts it and injects sortOrder before Umbraco processes the query.

    Here is a rough idea of what that code looks like (Have asked AI to generate code for this, Haven’t tried it, please check once.):

    using Umbraco.Cms.Core.DeliveryApi;
// other using statements...

public class CustomSortQueryDecorator : IApiContentQueryProvider
{
  private readonly IApiContentQueryProvider _innerProvider;

  public CustomSortQueryDecorator(IApiContentQueryProvider innerProvider)
  {
      _innerProvider = innerProvider;
  }

  public PagedModel<Guid> ExecuteQuery(SelectorOption selectorOption, IList<FilterOption> filterOptions, IList<SortOption> sortOptions, string culture, ProtectedAccess protectedAccess, bool preview, int skip, int take)
  {
      // If the API request doesn't specify a sort, force it to use sortOrder
      if (sortOptions == null || !sortOptions.Any())
      {
          sortOptions ??= new List<SortOption>();
          sortOptions.Add(new SortOption 
          { 
              FieldName = "sortOrder", 
              Direction = Direction.Ascending 
          });
      }

      // Pass the modified options back to the default handler
      return _innerProvider.ExecuteQuery(selectorOption, filterOptions, sortOptions, culture, protectedAccess, preview, skip, take);
  }
}

    You will need to register this in your Program.cs or a Composer so the Dependency Injection container picks it up instead of the default provider.

Documentation Link: If you want to look further into modifying how the API handles requests, check out the official docs on custom sorting and filtering here: Umbraco Extension API for Querying

Hope it helps!

Regards,
Shekhar