Sorting dates (mm dd, yyyy hh:mi am) what am I doing wrong?

charlesread

Hi everybody,

I love DT, what a great product! I have a table with two dates, and I can't seem to get them to sort as dates, they will sort as strings without an sType specification, but wont sort at all with one. Here is my code:



oTable = $('#pacr').dataTable({
"bJQueryUI": true,
"sPaginationType": "full_numbers",
"bAutoWidth" : true,
"aaSorting" : [[2,'desc']],
"aoColumns": [
null,
null,
{"sType":"date"},
{"sType":"date"},
null,
{ "iDataSort": 6 },
{ "bVisible": false }
]
});;
oTable.fnAdjustColumnSizing();






My Purchase Authorizations




ID
Status
Date Created
Date Needed
For
Total
dTotal




168Submitted
Jun 5, 2012 11:15 PMJun 27, 2012

$10,000.00
10000.00


167Submitted
Jun 5, 2012 5:56 PMAug 23, 2012

$4,000.00
4000.00







When I put the sType specifications on columns 3 and 4 the columns are no longer sortable... can anybody see what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!!!

CR

allan

Your date's won't be parsed by Javascript's built in Date.parse() method. If your date format doesn't work with that, then you need a date sorting plug-in: http://datatables.net/plug-ins/sorting#date_eu .

DataTables will automatically detect columns with Date.parse() suitable columns - so just setting sType: "date" isn't enough - a plug-in is required.

Allan

charlesread

Thank you very much for the response, but perhaps I am misunderstanding. The JS commands below return milliseconds:

alert(Date.parse('June 5, 2012 5:56 PM'));
alert(Date.parse('June 05, 2012'));
alert(Date.parse('Jun 5, 2012'));
alert(Date.parse('Jun 05, 2012 5:56 PM'));

Am I misinterpreting your response?

Thanks again!

allan

Fair enough :-). In that case there is something else in the column that is causing DataTables to thinking that it is string based. Can you run your table through the debugger please?

Allan

charlesread

Thanks again!

The debug code is: eforup. I think I see the issue, it is that I have the content in the TD (that is a date) wrapped in an anchor so that it will link to another page in my application (in this case a page where a purchase authorization can be edited) - so it seems like I need to strip the anchor out before sorting - any idea how I can do this?

Thanks for all of your help!

:)