JP Grace

I recently needed to add some sorting functionality to a few dataTables.  While I was grateful for plentiful example plugins to work with, I found them a bit rough around the edges.  Here are a couple of plugins that I’ve refined a bit for my purposes.

Formatted Numbers Sorting

This plugin originally written by Peter Gallagher and can be found on the dataTables sorting plugins page.  It had no comments and was using the eval statement (test performance variation with & without eval for yourself on jsperf).  I fixed both and then ran it through JSLint.

/*globals $ */
$.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['formatted-num-asc'] = function (x, y) {
	'use strict';

	// Define vars
	var a = [], b = [];

	// Match any character except: digits (0-9), dash (-), period (.), or backslash (/) and replace those characters with empty string.
	x = x.replace(/[^\d\-\.\/]/g, '');
	y = y.replace(/[^\d\-\.\/]/g, '');

	// Handle simple fractions
	if (x.indexOf('/') >= 0) {
		a = x.split("/");
		x = parseInt(a[0], 10) / parseInt(a[1], 10);
	}
	if (y.indexOf('/') >= 0) {
		b = y.split("/");
		y = parseInt(b[0], 10) / parseInt(b[1], 10);
	}

	return x - y;
};
$.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['formatted-num-desc'] = function (x, y) {
	'use strict';

	// Define vars
	var a = [], b = [];

	// Match any character except: digits (0-9), dash (-), period (.), or backslash (/) and replace those characters with empty string.
	x = x.replace(/[^\d\-\.\/]/g, '');
	y = y.replace(/[^\d\-\.\/]/g, '');

	// Handle simple fractions
	if (x.indexOf('/') >= 0) {
		a = x.split("/");
		x = parseInt(a[0], 10) / parseInt(a[1], 10);
	}
	if (y.indexOf('/') >= 0) {
		b = y.split("/");
		y = parseInt(b[0], 10) / parseInt(b[1], 10);
	}

	return y - x;
};

Check it out on github.

Currency Sorting

This plugin originally written by Allen Jardine and can also be found on the dataTables sorting plugins page.  It was good and well commented, but failed when the data was empty or was unexpected.  I extended it to anticipate empty values, any form of NA (eg, na, n/a, NA, N/A) and either single or double dashes (eg. -, –).  I also extended it to handle numbers without a leading currency symbol.  Of course it’s also run through JSLint

/*globals $ */
/*globals $ */
/*globals $ */
$.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['currency-asc'] = function (a, b) {
	'use strict';

	var x, y;

	/* Remove any commas (assumes that if present all strings will have a fixed number of d.p) */
	x = (a === "-" || a === "--" || a === '' || a.toLowerCase().replace('/', '') === 'na') ? -1 : a.replace(/,/g, "");
	y = (b === "-" || b === "--" || b === '' || b.toLowerCase().replace('/', '') === 'na') ? -1 : b.replace(/,/g, "");

	/* Remove the currency sign */
	if (typeof x === "string" && isNaN(x.substr(0, 1), 10)) {
		x = x.substring(1);
	}
	if (typeof y === "string" && isNaN(y.substr(0, 1), 10)) {
		y = y.substring(1);
	}

	/* Parse and return */
	x = parseFloat(x, 10);
	y = parseFloat(y, 10);

	return x - y;
};
$.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['currency-desc'] = function (a, b) {
	'use strict';

	var x, y;

	/* Remove any commas (assumes that if present all strings will have a fixed number of d.p) */
	x = (a === "-" || a === "--" || a === '' || a.toLowerCase().replace('/', '') === 'na') ? -1 : a.replace(/,/g, "");
	y = (b === "-" || b === "--" || b === '' || b.toLowerCase().replace('/', '') === 'na') ? -1 : b.replace(/,/g, "");

	/* Remove the currency sign */
	if (typeof x === "string" && isNaN(x.substr(0, 1), 10)) {
		x = x.substring(1);
	}
	if (typeof y === "string" && isNaN(y.substr(0, 1), 10)) {
		y = y.substring(1);
	}

	/* Parse and return */
	x = parseFloat(x, 10);
	y = parseFloat(y, 10);

	return y - x;
};

Check it out on github.