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This site contains the legacy documentation for DataTables v1.9 and earlier for reference only.
DataTables 1.9 was End Of Life in 2014. Do not use it for new work.
The current release of DataTables can always be found on DataTables.net.
DataTables sorting and type detection example

Preamble

When dealing with your own data formatting, it can often be very useful to have DataTables detect data types and sorting them accordingly for types which are not build into DataTables. For this reason plug-in support is provided to allow custom type detection and sorting.

This example shows sorting with a comma (',') for a decimal place. These plug-ins (and others can be found on DataTables.net.

Live example

Rendering engine Browser Platform(s) Engine version CSS grade
Trident Internet Explorer 4.0 Win 95+ 4 X
Trident Internet Explorer 5.0 Win 95+ 5 C
Trident Internet Explorer 5.5 Win 95+ 5,5 A
Trident Internet Explorer 6 Win 98+ 6 A
Trident Internet Explorer 7 Win XP SP2+ 7 A
Trident AOL browser (AOL desktop) Win XP 6 A
Gecko Firefox 1.0 Win 98+ / OSX.2+ 1,7 A
Gecko Firefox 1.5 Win 98+ / OSX.2+ 1,8 A
Gecko Firefox 2.0 Win 98+ / OSX.2+ 1,8 A
Gecko Firefox 3.0 Win 2k+ / OSX.3+ 1,9 A
Gecko Camino 1.0 OSX.2+ 1,8 A
Gecko Camino 1.5 OSX.3+ 1,8 A
Gecko Netscape 7.2 Win 95+ / Mac OS 8.6-9.2 1,7 A
Gecko Netscape Browser 8 Win 98SE+ 1,7 A
Gecko Netscape Navigator 9 Win 98+ / OSX.2+ 1,8 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.0 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.1 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1,1 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.2 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1,2 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.3 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1,3 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.4 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1,4 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.5 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1,5 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.6 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ 1,6 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.7 Win 98+ / OSX.1+ 1,7 A
Gecko Mozilla 1.8 Win 98+ / OSX.1+ 1,8 A
Gecko Seamonkey 1.1 Win 98+ / OSX.2+ 1,8 A
Gecko Epiphany 2.20 Gnome 1,8 A
Webkit Safari 1.2 OSX.3 125,5 A
Webkit Safari 1.3 OSX.3 312,8 A
Webkit Safari 2.0 OSX.4+ 419,3 A
Webkit Safari 3.0 OSX.4+ 522,1 A
Webkit OmniWeb 5.5 OSX.4+ 420 A
Webkit iPod Touch / iPhone iPod 420,1 A
Webkit S60 S60 413 A
Presto Opera 7.0 Win 95+ / OSX.1+ - A
Presto Opera 7.5 Win 95+ / OSX.2+ - A
Presto Opera 8.0 Win 95+ / OSX.2+ - A
Presto Opera 8.5 Win 95+ / OSX.2+ - A
Presto Opera 9.0 Win 95+ / OSX.3+ - A
Presto Opera 9.2 Win 88+ / OSX.3+ - A
Presto Opera 9.5 Win 88+ / OSX.3+ - A
Presto Opera for Wii Wii - A
Presto Nokia N800 N800 - A
Presto Nintendo DS browser Nintendo DS 8,5 C/A1
KHTML Konqureror 3.1 KDE 3.1 3,1 C
KHTML Konqureror 3.3 KDE 3.3 3,3 A
KHTML Konqureror 3.5 KDE 3.5 3,5 A
Tasman Internet Explorer 4.5 Mac OS 8-9 - X
Tasman Internet Explorer 5.1 Mac OS 7.6-9 1 C
Tasman Internet Explorer 5.2 Mac OS 8-X 1 C
Misc NetFront 3.1 Embedded devices - C
Misc NetFront 3.4 Embedded devices - A
Misc Dillo 0.8 Embedded devices - X
Misc Links Text only - X
Misc Lynx Text only - X
Misc IE Mobile Windows Mobile 6 - C
Misc PSP browser PSP - C
Other browsers All others - - U
Rendering engine Browser Platform(s) Engine version CSS grade

Initialisation code

/* Note 'unshift' does not work in IE6. A simply array concatenation would. This is used
 * to give the custom type top priority
 */
jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.aTypes.unshift(
	function ( sData )
	{
		var sValidChars = "0123456789-,";
		var Char;
		var bDecimal = false;
		
		/* Check the numeric part */
		for ( i=0 ; i<sData.length ; i++ )
		{
			Char = sData.charAt(i);
			if (sValidChars.indexOf(Char) == -1)
			{
				return null;
			}
			
			/* Only allowed one decimal place... */
			if ( Char == "," )
			{
				if ( bDecimal )
				{
					return null;
				}
				bDecimal = true;
			}
		}
		
		return 'numeric-comma';
	}
);

jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['numeric-comma-asc']  = function(a,b) {
	var x = (a == "-") ? 0 : a.replace( /,/, "." );
	var y = (b == "-") ? 0 : b.replace( /,/, "." );
	x = parseFloat( x );
	y = parseFloat( y );
	return ((x < y) ? -1 : ((x > y) ?  1 : 0));
};

jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['numeric-comma-desc'] = function(a,b) {
	var x = (a == "-") ? 0 : a.replace( /,/, "." );
	var y = (b == "-") ? 0 : b.replace( /,/, "." );
	x = parseFloat( x );
	y = parseFloat( y );
	return ((x < y) ?  1 : ((x > y) ? -1 : 0));
};

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#example').dataTable();
} );

Other examples