How to impose numerical sort with jQuery and dataTables?

Question

I am using the DataTables jQuery plugin. I am trying to enable sort interaction, but when sorting it sorts alphabetically and not numerically. As you can see in the enclosed picture, -4317.93 is shown after -631 and -456. How can I make DataTable sort a column numerically?

Answer 1

Updated answer

With the latest version of DataTables you need to set the type property of the object you provide in the columnDefs array, like this:

$('#example').dataTable({
  "columnDefs": [
    { "type": "num" }
  ]
});

Note that there are many other methods of sorting which can be found in the documentation

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Original answer

You need to add the sType parameter to your column definition.

For example:

$('#example').dataTable({
  "aoColumnDefs": [
    { "sType": "numeric" }
  ]
});

More information in the DataTable documentation: http://www.datatables.net/plug-ins/sorting