Question

I’ve tried to make a widget that can sort a group of rows separately inside a table and at the same time make the row-group to stick with “grouped rows”. I can’t figure out how to approach this problem …

EDIT: I want to sort on the non colspan columns. every group should behave as a sub-table

Basic setup in jsfiddle, can anyone push me in the right direction ?

EDIT: new jsfiddle http://jsfiddle.net/L8bwW/28/

Answer 1

Here is a Working example that does not use tablesorter.

The key is to use the tbody element to group your rows. Then sort all rows but the last, within each tbody.

The table might look like this:

  <table class="sortable">
    <thead>
        <tr> <th></th> <th>A-head</th> <th>B-head</th> <th>C-head</th> </tr>
    </thead>
    <tfoot>
        <tr> <td></td> <td>A-foot</td> <td>B-foot</td> <td>C-foot</td></tr>
    </tfoot>

    <tbody class='sortable'>
        <tr> <td>DDD</td><td> r1c1</td> <td>r1c2</td> <td>r1c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td>AAA</td><td> r2c1</td> <td>r2c2</td> <td>r2c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td>CCC</td><td> r3c1</td> <td>r3c2</td> <td>r3c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td>BBB</td><td> r4c1</td> <td>r4c2</td> <td>r4c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td colspan="4">summary info for the first group of rows</td> </tr>
    </tbody>

    <tbody class='sortable'>
        <tr> <td>Zorro</td><td> r5c1</td> <td>r5c2</td> <td>r5c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td>Caleb</td><td> r6c1</td> <td>r6c2</td> <td>r6c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td>Momo</td><td> r7c1</td> <td>r7c2</td> <td>r7c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td>Wolfie</td><td> r8c1</td> <td>r8c2</td> <td>r8c3</td> </tr>
        <tr> <td colspan="4">summary info for rowgroup #2</td> </tr>
    </tbody>
     ...

And a sort fn for it might look like this:

  function SortIt() {
      jQuery('table.sortable > tbody.sortable').each(function(index,tbody) {
        var $rowGroup = jQuery(tbody);

        // select all but the last row in the tbody
        var rows = $rowGroup.find('tr:not(last-child)').get();

        var sortDirection = $rowGroup.is('.sorted-asc') ? -1 : 1;

        // Set a custom property on each row - 'sortKey', the key to sort.
        // This example uses the text in the first column. It could use
        // any column, or any content in the row.
        jQuery.each(rows, function(index, row) {
            row.sortKey = jQuery(row).children('td').first().text();
        });

        // actually sort the rows
        rows.sort(function(a, b) {
            if (a.sortKey < b.sortKey) return -sortDirection;
            if (a.sortKey > b.sortKey) return sortDirection;
            return 0;
        });

        // retain the summary row - the last one
        var summaryRow = $rowGroup.find("tr:last-child");

        // remove all the rows from the tbody
        $rowGroup.find("tr").remove();

        // append the rows in sorted order
        jQuery.each(rows, function(index, row) {
            $rowGroup.append(row);
            row.sortKey = null;
        });

        // append the final row
        $rowGroup.append(summaryRow);

        if (sortDirection == 1) { $rowGroup.addClass('sorted-asc'); }
        else {$rowGroup.removeClass('sorted-asc'); }

      });
  }