Sorting in JavaScript

[deepak kukreja]

Hi,

I have a table, which is to be made sortable. When the user clicks on first column header it should sort on the first column i.e. Order by first column
, and then under the first column data, order the data in second column......and so on. User can click on any of the columns so the order by will also change accordingly.

as an example.

if the columns available are:

Project name, Employee name.

If there are two projects which starts from letter 'k', then after sorting on projects column, it should sort on employee name column for those two projects.

Is it possible to do this with javascript.
Could somebody provide me with good links?

[Eric Pascarello]

This is the mess I always wanted to get into with my table, but I never got around to it since I am working on my book.

I have not seen it anywhere online.

[Amol Sonawane]

Hi Deepak
This can be done using javascript. You can follow this approach

1)Use a constructor to store all the column values. For example

function person(firstName, lastName, age)
{
this.FirstName = firstName;
this.LastName = lastName;
this.Age = parseInt(parseFloat(age));
}
2)Store all the objects in an array
e.g. people[people.length++] = new person("amol", "sonawane", 22);
Here values will come from your table columns

3)Write the appropriate sorting function
e.g. function sortByFirstName(a, b)
{
var x = a.FirstName.toLowerCase();
var y = b.FirstName.toLowerCase();
return ((x < y) ? -1 : ((x > y) ? 1 : 0));
}
4)Use the inbuilt sort function of javascript arrays
e.g people.sort(sortByFirstName);
5) Populate your html table dynamically using this sorted array

Hope this answers your problem
regards
- amol