p:datatable loses sort column and order after ajax refresh

Question

I have a button on a page that causes my data table to refresh via an AJAX request. Something like this:

Answer 1

First of all, there is an open ticket on the PrimeFaces Issue Tracker, which targets this question but was recently labeled as "won't fix".

Nevertheless, I found a nice workaround. The sorting of PrimeFaces tables can be triggered by calling an undocumented JavaScript method on the datatable's widget. The following might not work for future releases of PrimeFaces, but it does for 3.4.2:

Just add the following to your component, which triggers the update:

oncomplete="myTableWidget.sort($(PrimeFaces.escapeClientId('#{p:component('sortColumnId')}')), 'ASCENDING')"

The table might look like this:

    ...

    
        
            
        
        
    

So updating the table could work like this.