I had this issue of how the sorter was handling dates along with blank values. Turns out the sorter code treats a blank cell as “Jan 1, 1970” (0 in javascript). What I ended up doing was updating the “shortDate” parser to handle blank dates as a constant specified in the config:

tablesorter: new
function () {

var parsers = [],
widgets = [];

this.defaults = {
cssHeader: “header”,
cssAsc: “headerSortUp”,
cssDesc: “headerSortDown”,
cssChildRow: “expand-child”,
sortInitialOrder: “asc”,
sortMultiSortKey: “shiftKey”,
sortForce: null,
sortAppend: null,
sortLocaleCompare: true,
textExtraction: “simple”,
parsers: {}, widgets: [],
widgetZebra: {
css: [“even”, “odd”]
}, headers: {}, widthFixed: false,
cancelSelection: true,
sortList: [],
headerList: [],
dateFormat: “us”,
decimal: ‘/\.|\,/g’,
onRenderHeader: null,
selectorHeaders: ‘thead th’,
debug: false,
treatBlankDateAs: “01/01/0001”
};

…

ts.addParser({
id: “shortDate”,
is: function (s) {
return /\d{1,2}[\/\-]\d{1,2}[\/\-]\d{2,4}/.test(s);
}, format: function (s, table) {
var c = table.config;
if (s === “”) {
s = c.treatBlankDateAs;
}
s = s.replace(/\-/g, “/”);
if (c.dateFormat == “us”) {
// reformat the string in ISO format
s = s.replace(/(\d{1,2})[\/\-](\d{1,2})[\/\-](\d{4})/, “$3/$1/$2”);
} else if (c.dateFormat == “uk”) {
// reformat the string in ISO format
s = s.replace(/(\d{1,2})[\/\-](\d{1,2})[\/\-](\d{4})/, “$3/$2/$1”);
} else if (c.dateFormat == “dd/mm/yy” || c.dateFormat == “dd-mm-yy”) {
s = s.replace(/(\d{1,2})[\/\-](\d{1,2})[\/\-](\d{2})/, “$1/$2/$3”);
}
return $.tablesorter.formatFloat(new Date(s).getTime());
}, type: “numeric”
});

Thanks for this post! The table sorter documentation is lacking (because I couldn’t use the class metadata tags, and that is the only method they document), but this is exactly what I needed.

Sadly, “floating” has evidently been removed. In the 2.0 version I’m looking at, the current list is:

text
digit
currency
ipAddress
url
isoDate
percent
usLongDate
shortDate
time
metadata

Which doesn’t help me. Since I’m trying to get it to sort numerically formatted data (US Locale):

11
22,222
33

But since it cuts off everything after the comma, it sorts 22,222 above 34. Wrong. So, either I’ll have to extend w/ my own sorter or write a textExtractor that removes numeric formatting. Sigh.

I agree that this information (the parsers/sorters list) should have been in the documentation.

Is there a way to sort by day of week?

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone knew how to deal with IE 8 not properly sorting by digits when the column head is clicked. The first column is numerical with the column header text “ID”. Code sample below:

$(document).ready(function(){

})
});


The problem is, in Chrome and Firefox (on Windows 7) I can click on the “ID” column header and the sorting will toggle from ascending to descending (and back).
In IE8 (also Win 7) you can click all you like on the ID column header.

Any help appreciated, thanks.
Adam

Does anyone know if it’s possible to get tablesorter to correctly sort a column of the days of the week? At the moment it just lists them alphabetically. I’ve searched high and low for answers but the only references I’ve found are to force it to parse a column by date etc. as suggested here.

Any suggestions / advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Great post – I had problems with the sorters too.

I want to have two header rows where :

1st row contains column totals
2nd Row contains column names

How can I prevent tablesorter from sorting when 1st row is clicked?

Thanks for this. Helped me a great deal with a problem I had trying to sort an event listing by date. Couldn’t figure it out and it was doing my head in but this post saved the day for me.

Cheers!
KJ