sort date field with tablesorter

Question

I'm using the JQuery tablesorter plugin. The table has a column that shows dates in the format 05 Mar 2012. The tablesorter plugin seems to treat this column as text, because it sorts it in the order

• 05 Mar 2012
• 06 Jan 2012
• 07 Dec 2012

How can I sort these dates in chronological order instead?

Answer 1

Parse the date string to a Date, then convert it to milliseconds. Let tablesorter sort the column as numeric.

$.tablesorter.addParser({ 
    id: 'my_date_column', 
    is: function(s) { 
        // return false so this parser is not auto detected 
        return false; 
    }, 
    format: function(s) { 
        var timeInMillis = new Date.parse(s);
        return timeInMillis;         
    }, 
    // set type, either numeric or text 
    type: 'numeric' 
}); 

$(function() { 
    $("table").tablesorter({ 
        headers: { 
            6: {       // Change this to your column position
                sorter:'my_date_column' 
            } 
        } 
    }); 
});

If you have trouble with Date.parse, see my answer to this question.