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@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+
+Loaded attributes and default sorting management
+````````````````````````````````````````````````
+
+* The class attribute `fetch_attrs` allows to defined in an entity class
+  a list of names of attributes or relations that should be automatically
+  loaded when we recover the entities of this type. In the case of relations,
+  we are limited to *subject of cardinality `?` or `1`* relations.
+
+* The class method `fetch_order(attr, var)` expects an attribute (or relation)
+  name as a parameter and a variable name, and it should return a string
+  to use in the requirement `ORDER BY` of an RQL query to automatically
+  sort the list of entities of such type according to this attribute, or
+  `None` if we do not want to sort on the attribute given in the parameter.
+  By default, the entities are sorted according to their creation date.
+
+* The class method `fetch_unrelated_order(attr, var)` is similar to the 
+  method `fetch_order` except that it is essentially used to control
+  the sorting of drop-down lists enabling relations creation in 
+  the editing view of an entity.
+
+The function `fetch_config(fetchattrs, mainattr=None)` simplifies the
+definition of the attributes to load and the sorting by returning a 
+list of attributes to pre-load (considering automatically the attributes
+of `AnyEntity`) and a sorting function based on the main attribute
+(the second parameter if specified otherwisethe first attribute from
+the list `fetchattrs`).
+This function is defined in `cubicweb.entities`.
+
+For example: ::
+
+  class Transition(AnyEntity):
+    """..."""
+    id = 'Transition'
+    fetch_attrs, fetch_order = fetch_config(['name'])
+
+Indicates that for the entity type "Transition", you have to pre-load
+the attribute `name` and sort by default on this attribute.