tablesorter to sort columns which has <br> within them

Question

I have a table which has one of the column's as datetime: eg: 1/11/2011 12:34 PM

Unfortunately, the width of the column does not allow me to display datetime in full length in one line, hence I am displaying the contents in two lines, like

   1/11/2011
   12:34 PM

But tablesorter will not work if the column contents have a <br> in them. Any idea how I can achieve sorting via tablesorter for this issue? I am having tablesorter revision 2.0.5b. I cannot upgrade to newer version because it might break existing features of the rails app.

tablesorter is the jquery plugin

Answer 1

You'll probably need a custom parser to remove the carriage return; honestly, I don't think a <br> needs to be added if the text is allowed to wrap, and you set a width for that column.

Anyway, try this code (demo)

$(function () {

    $.tablesorter.addParser({
        // set a unique id
        id: 'date',
        is: function (s, table, cell) {
            // return false so this parser is not auto detected
            return false;
        },
        format: function (s, table, cell, cellIndex) {
            // replace extra spacing/carriage returns
            var str = s.replace(/\s+/g," "),
                date = new Date( str );
            return date instanceof Date && isFinite(date) ? date.getTime() : s;
        },
        // set type, either numeric or text
        type: 'numeric'
    });

    $('table').tablesorter({
        theme: 'blue',
        headers: {
            7: { sorter: 'date' }
        }
    });
});