Question

I have a custom table that has a custom format to it, which makes it quite impossible to apply existing table sorting plugins.

How do most plugins accomplish this on a standard HTML table.

Just a basic, simple bullets explanation is fine. Just want to get an idea of how it works.

Answer 1

Well, I never took a look at the source of such plugin but I think it works that way.

An HTML table is kind of a matrice, you can probably represent it like this :

var table = [
 ['Id', 'Name',    'Phone number',   'Email'],
 [2,    'Boris',   '[phone]',   '[e-mail]'],
 [1,    'You',      null,            '[e-mail]'],
 [5,    'Anyone',   null,            null]
];

Using such matrice, you’re able to reorder like this:

table.sort(function(a, b) {
   return ((a[0] == b[0]) ? 0 : ((a[0] > b[0]) ? 1 : -1));
});

Results in:

 ['Id', 'Name',    'Phone number',   'Email'],
 [1,    'You',      null,            '[e-mail]'],
 [2,    'Boris',   '[phone]',   '[e-mail]'],
 [5,    'Anyone',   null,            null]

Then, you reorder the rows by moving them using the sorted array.

Obviously, you’ll have more complex sort algorithm, but I think basically it is done like this.