Custom Sorting of jQuery dataTable Columns

Question

I have a table which contains columns of numbers and NA.

    NA


    1024
         


        

Answer 1

By looking at the Numbers with HTML plugin you can take the existing code and modify the regex to look for negative numbers instead of stripping everything. Using that you can put together a HTML tag around the "NA" and use the HTML5 data-internalid to store the lowest number of the collection.

so it becomes:

NA

and (notice the regex)

jQuery.extend( jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort, {
"num-html-pre": function ( a ) {
    var x = String(a).replace(/(?!^-)[^0-9.]/g, "");
    return parseFloat( x );
},

"num-html-asc": function ( a, b ) {
    return ((a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0));
},

"num-html-desc": function ( a, b ) {
    return ((a < b) ? 1 : ((a > b) ? -1 : 0));
}});

Then in the datatable, set the type to num-html

$('table').dataTable({
    "aoColumns": [{ "sType": "num-html" }],
    "aaSorting": [[ 0, "desc" ]],
});

You can see my full solution here: http://jsfiddle.net/rYtxh/4/