Determine date format in use to aid sorting

[brendanheyu]

I'm not able to sort columns with dates as it seems there is no way to define the date format in use.

Maybe it could be done as : data-tablesaw-sortable-date="true" data-tablesaw-sortable-date-format="dd/mm/yyyy"

That would be really helpful.

[saiballo]

I have the same problem

[zachleat]

It’s unlikely we’ll support this level of sorting in the plugin. We expose functionality to do this through custom sort functions. See “Advanced Option: Custom Sort Functions” on https://github.com/filamentgroup/tablesaw#sortable

[josephsong]

An easy way to work around date sorting specifically, is to precede the formatted date with a machine-sortable version, and then use CSS to hide the machine-sortable version. ISO format works nicely.

Note, however, that display:none probably won't work. It has to be technically visible, but can be hidden from the user.

For example,

<table class="tablesaw tablesaw-stack" data-tablesaw-mode="stack" data-tablesaw-sortable>
    <thead>
    <tr>
        <th data-tablesaw-sortable-col>Date</th>
        <th data-tablesaw-sortable-col>Something else</th>
    </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
    <tr>
        <td>
          <span style="position: absolute; left: -9999px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow: hidden;">
            2017-09-01T10:51:24
          </span>
          Sep 1
        </td>
        <td>5</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>
          <span style="position: absolute; left: -9999px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow: hidden;">
            2017-08-31T10:51:24
          </span>
          Aug 31
        </td>
        <td>10</td>
    </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

[nickpish]

Thanks @josephsong for the work-around- I'm finding myself in a similar position needing to essentially abstract the sort date value from the display value. @zachleat How difficult would it be to modify the script to look at a data attribute on the <td> such as data-sort-value instead of the cell value itself?