Jquery Datatable sort not working with html elements

Question

Sort won't work with html elements in table cell.

Tried adding the aoColumnDefs into it. Also specify column data for the column with 'sType': 'html' and the sort does not seems to work.

Attached example code here (jsfiddle)

Answer 1

I have faced this issue before on some project, use mRender() instead of fnCreatedCell(). The render function receives a type as a second argument from where you can detect if the rendering if for 'display' or 'sort' among other things. So, if type is 'display' you can return the HTML and otherwise return the raw data.

var data = [
  ["test", [20.2, "green"], "test"],
  ['test1', ['10.2', 'red'], "test"],
  ['test2', ['15.2', 'red'], "test"],
  ['test3', ['0', 'red'], "test"],
  ['test4', ['0.5', 'green'], "test"],
  ['test5', ['1.5', 'green'], "test"],
];  

$(document).ready(function()
{
    $('#data2').DataTable(
    {
      bSort: true,
      aaData: data,
      aaSorting: [[1, 'asc']],
      aoColumnDefs: [
        { 
          bSortable: true,
          sType: "numeric", 
          aTargets: [1],
          mRender: function(data, type)
          {
            if (type !== 'display')
              return data[0];

            return '<label style="color:' + data[1] + '">' + data[0] + '</label>';
          },
        }
      ]
    });    
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src=https://cdn.datatables.net/1.9.4/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.datatables.net/1.9.4/css/jquery.dataTables.css">

<table id="data2" class="">
  <thead>
  <tr>
    <th>col1</th>
    <th>col2</th>
    <th>col3</th>
  </tr>
  </thead>
</table>