Changing how a column sorts

CVernon

I currently have a defined column render for a specific column like such:

"render": function (data, type, row, meta) {
return '<a href="' + getLink(data) + '">' + data[0] + </a>;
}

My issue is that the data variable is an array, such as [0, 1, "String", 1, "AnotherString", 4, "OneMoreString"] etc.
The reason the data variable is an array is that it contains properties to generate the link for the <a> element surrounding the value.

When I try to sort asc or desc on this column it always messes up and doesn't sort based on data[0], in which I want to as that is the value being displayed.

An example of data:
[0] => [4, 3, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string", 2, "string", 0, "string"]
[1] => [5, 1, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string" ]
[2] => [5, 1, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string", 1, "string" ]
[3] => [1, 1, "string", 0, "string", 0, "string", 0, "string", 0, "string" ]

As I'm displaying data[0], the following data is put into the table, row by row:
4, 5, 5, 1

When I sort them I'd expect to sort them as such:
1, 4, 5, 5 or 5, 5, 4, 1

But what happens is:
4, 5, 5, 1 or 1, 5, 5, 4

CVernon

== Didn't mean to input answer ==

DirceuNazareth

Currently, your data is the result of the render function.
So, first you need to set your data properly. There are many ways to do this job...
My suggestion is:

Not user columns.render, instead use columns.createdCell because it will not affect the sort.

so the code will be something like this:

{
  "data": yourData,
  "render": function (data, type, row, meta) {
      return data[0];
   },
   "createdCell": function( cell, cellData, rowData, rowIndex, colIndex ){
       var theData = rowData.yourData;
       $(cell).html( '<a href="' + getLink(theData) + '">' + theData[0] + '</a>');
  },
  "type": "num"
}

As I said there are a variety of way to solve the problem.

CVernon

Thank you, this worked perfectly