Saving a table as it is displayed

skippy

Hi all,

I've got a DataTable that shows some rows that a user has loaded from a spreadsheet. I'm making it via:

1) using Microsoft MVC to draw a page as an HTML table
2) initialising DataTables

I'm using the RowReorder and the build in sort by column feature.

The order of the rows is important. What I want the user to be able to do is sort the table by various columns and drag the rows around, then save the table exactly as it displayed.

Question a):
What I've found myself having to do is read the row data directly from the html in the tables, as using the datatables data access routines presents the data in it's original form. e.g. if a user sorts by column C, the data in datatables is still in it's original order. This feels bad. Is there a better way?

Question b):
If a user sorts via a column, they can't drag the rows around (or rather they can, then it immediately sorts the field by that column again and it appears that their changes are lost). Is there anything I can do about this.

I guess I want the column sort to actually sort the data, rather than just sort the display of the data....