Sort courses announcement date

If there is no announcement date (in the policy metadata) then use a
heuristic to sort them.

If there is an announcement date, the use it in the heuristic to
determine if the course is new or not.

lms/djangoapps/courseware/courses.py

@@ -64,6 +64,7 @@ def course_image_url(course):
     path = course.metadata['data_dir'] + "/images/course_image.jpg"
     return try_staticfiles_lookup(path)
 
+
 def find_file(fs, dirs, filename):
     """
     Looks for a filename in a list of dirs on a filesystem, in the specified order.
@@ -80,6 +81,7 @@ def find_file(fs, dirs, filename):
             return filepath
     raise ResourceNotFoundError("Could not find {0}".format(filename))
 
+
 def get_course_about_section(course, section_key):
     """
     This returns the snippet of html to be rendered on the course about page,
@@ -234,4 +236,18 @@ def get_courses(user, domain=None):
     courses = [c for c in courses if has_access(user, c, 'see_exists')]
 
     courses = sorted(courses, key=lambda course:course.number)
+
+    return courses
+
+
+def sort_by_announcement(courses):
+    """
+    Sorts a list of courses by their announcement date. If the date is
+    not available, sort them by their start date.
+    """
+
+    # Sort courses by how far are they from they start day
+    key = lambda course: course.sorting_score
+    courses = sorted(courses, key=key)
+
     return courses

lms/djangoapps/courseware/views.py

@@ -17,7 +17,8 @@ from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_control
 
 from courseware import grades
 from courseware.access import has_access
-from courseware.courses import (get_courses, get_course_with_access, get_courses_by_university)
+from courseware.courses import (get_courses, get_course_with_access,
+                                get_courses_by_university, sort_by_announcement)
 import courseware.tabs as tabs
 from courseware.models import StudentModuleCache
 from module_render import toc_for_course, get_module, get_instance_module
@@ -67,11 +68,8 @@ def courses(request):
     '''
     Render "find courses" page.  The course selection work is done in courseware.courses.
     '''
-    courses = get_courses(request.user, domain=request.META.get('HTTP_HOST'))
-
-    # Sort courses by how far are they from they start day
-    key = lambda course: course.days_until_start
-    courses = sorted(courses, key=key, reverse=True)
+    courses = get_courses(request.user, request.META.get('HTTP_HOST'))
+    courses = sort_by_announcement(courses)
 
     return render_to_response("courseware/courses.html", {'courses': courses})
 
@@ -438,10 +436,7 @@ def university_profile(request, org_id):
     # Only grab courses for this org...
     courses = get_courses_by_university(request.user,
                                         domain=request.META.get('HTTP_HOST'))[org_id]
-
-    # Sort courses by how far are they from they start day
-    key = lambda course: course.days_until_start
-    courses = sorted(courses, key=key, reverse=True)
+    courses = sort_by_announcement(courses)
 
     context = dict(courses=courses, org_id=org_id)
     template_file = "university_profile/{0}.html".format(org_id).lower()