jQuery Tablesorter - sorting alphanumeric columns

Question

I'm trying to sort a column that contains alphanumeric data e.g.

• sometext1
• sometext2
• sometext3
• sometext10

unfortunately Tablesorter doesn't sort correctly i.e.

• sometext1
• sometext10
• sometext2
• sometext3

Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

The solution:

    $.tablesorter.addParser({
      id: 'alphanum',
      is: function(s) {
        return false;
      },
      format: function(s) {
        var str = s.replace(/(\d{1,2})/g, function(a){
            return pad(a);
        });

        return str;
      },
      type: 'text'
    });

    function pad(num ){
      var s = '00000' + num;
      return s.substr(s.length-5);
    }    

Answer 2

http://tablesorter.com/docs/example-parsers.html

So, this example shows you how to create your own ordering logic.Look at the function:

    format: function(s) { 
        // format your data for normalization 
        return s.toLowerCase().replace(/good/,2).replace(/medium/,1).replace(/bad/,0); 
    }, 

You need to write a javascript function to get the text and numeric portions of your string "sometext3" and then format the number with zero padding "sometext00000003" this would fix your sorting issue and will not change how it's displayed in the client.

Here's a rudimentary example:

<script>
function normalizeAlphaNumeric(text) {
r = new RegExp("([^\\d]*)(\\d*)");
var match = r.exec(text);
    return match[1] + pad(match[2]);
}

function pad(num) {
    var s = "000000000" + num;
    return s.substr(s.length-8); // i chose 8
}

document.write(normalizeAlphaNumeric("sometext1") + "<br/>");
document.write(normalizeAlphaNumeric("sometext2")+ "<br/>");
document.write(normalizeAlphaNumeric("sometext3")+ "<br/>");
document.write(normalizeAlphaNumeric("sometext10")+ "<br/>");

</script>

The output of this is:

sometext00000001
sometext00000002
sometext00000003
sometext00000010

Which is sortable now.