jQuery table sort

Question

I came across this, and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. Click on the column headers to sort ascending, and again to sort descending.

• Works in Chrome, Firefox, Opera AND IE(8)
• Only uses JQuery
• Does alpha and numeric sorting - ascending and descending

$('th').click(function(){
    var table = $(this).parents('table').eq(0)
    var rows = table.find('tr:gt(0)').toArray().sort(comparer($(this).index()))
    this.asc = !this.asc
    if (!this.asc){rows = rows.reverse()}
    for (var i = 0; i < rows.length; i++){table.append(rows[i])}
})
function comparer(index) {
    return function(a, b) {
        var valA = getCellValue(a, index), valB = getCellValue(b, index)
        return $.isNumeric(valA) && $.isNumeric(valB) ? valA - valB : valA.toString().localeCompare(valB)
    }
}
function getCellValue(row, index){ return $(row).children('td').eq(index).text() }

table, th, td {
    border: 1px solid black;
}
th {
    cursor: pointer;
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<table>
    <tr><th>Country</th><th>Date</th><th>Size</th></tr>
    <tr><td>France</td><td>2001-01-01</td><td>25</td></tr>
    <tr><td><a href=#>spain</a></td><td>2005-05-05</td><td></td></tr>
    <tr><td>Lebanon</td><td>2002-02-02</td><td>-17</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Argentina</td><td>2005-04-04</td><td>100</td></tr>
    <tr><td>USA</td><td></td><td>-6</td></tr>
</table>

** Update: 2018

• For those that are interested, I've provided an ES6 Plain Javascript solution here.

If you want to avoid all the bells and whistles then may I suggest this simple sortElements plugin. Usage:

var table = $('table');

$('.sortable th')
    .wrapInner('<span title="sort this column"/>')
    .each(function(){

        var th = $(this),
            thIndex = th.index(),
            inverse = false;

        th.click(function(){

            table.find('td').filter(function(){

                return $(this).index() === thIndex;

            }).sortElements(function(a, b){

                if( $.text([a]) == $.text([b]) )
                    return 0;

                return $.text([a]) > $.text([b]) ?
                    inverse ? -1 : 1
                    : inverse ? 1 : -1;

            }, function(){

                // parentNode is the element we want to move
                return this.parentNode; 

            });

            inverse = !inverse;

        });

    });

And a demo. (click the "city" and "facility" column-headers to sort)

By far, the easiest one I've used is: http://datatables.net/

Amazingly simple...just make sure if you go the DOM replacement route (IE, building a table and letting DataTables reformat it) then make sure to format your table with <thead> and <tbody> or it won't work. That's about the only gotcha.

There's also support for AJAX, etc. As with all really good pieces of code, it's also VERY easy to turn it all off. You'd be suprised what you might use, though. I started with a "bare" DataTable that only sorted one field and then realized that some of the features were really relevant to what I'm doing. Clients LOVE the new features.

Bonus points to DataTables for full ThemeRoller support....

I've also had ok luck with tablesorter, but it's not nearly as easy, not quite as well documented, and has only ok features.

We just started using this slick tool: https://plugins.jquery.com/tablesorter/

There is a video on its use at: http://www.highoncoding.com/Articles/695_Sorting_GridView_Using_JQuery_TableSorter_Plug_in.aspx

    $('#tableRoster').tablesorter({
        headers: {
            0: { sorter: false },
            4: { sorter: false }
        }
    });

With a simple table

<table id="tableRoster">
        <thead> 
                  <tr>
                    <th><input type="checkbox" class="rCheckBox" value="all" id="rAll" ></th>
                    <th>User</th>
                    <th>Verified</th>
                    <th>Recently Accessed</th>
                    <th>&nbsp;</th>
                  </tr>
        </thead>

My answer would be "be careful". A lot of jQuery table-sorting add-ons only sort what you pass to the browser. In many cases, you have to keep in mind that tables are dynamic sets of data, and could potentially contain zillions of lines of data.

You do mention that you only have 4 columns, but much more importantly, you don't mention how many rows we're talking about here.

If you pass 5000 lines to the browser from the database, knowing that the actual database-table contains 100,000 rows, my question is: what's the point in making the table sortable? In order to do a proper sort, you'd have to send the query back to the database, and let the database (a tool actually designed to sort data) do the sorting for you.

In direct answer to your question though, the best sorting add-on I've come across is Ingrid. There are many reasons that I don't like this add-on ("unnecessary bells and whistles..." as you call it), but one of it's best features in terms of sort, is that it uses ajax, and doesn't assume that you've already passed it all the data before it does its sort.

I recognise that this answer is probably overkill (and over 2 years late) for your requirements, but I do get annoyed when developers in my field overlook this point. So I hope someone else picks up on it.

I feel better now.