tablesorter is a jQuery plugin for turning a standard HTML table with THEAD and TBODY tags into a sortable table without page refreshes. tablesorter can successfully parse and sort many types of data including linked data in a cell.

Documentation

• See the full documentation.
• All of the original document pages have been included.
• Information from my blog post on undocumented options and lots of new demos have also been included.
• Change log moved from included text file into the wiki documentation.

Demos

• Basic alpha-numeric sort Demo.
• Links to demo pages can be found within the main documentation.
• More demos & playgrounds - updated in the wiki pages.

Features

• Multi-column alphanumeric sorting.
• Multi-tbody sorting - see the options table on the main document page.
• Parsers for sorting text, alphanumeric text, URIs, integers, currency, floats, IP addresses, dates (ISO, long and short formats) & time. Add your own easily.
• Support for ROWSPAN and COLSPAN on TH elements.
• Support secondary "hidden" sorting (e.g., maintain alphabetical sort when sorting on other criteria).
• Extensibility via widget system.
• Cross-browser: IE 6.0+, FF 2+, Safari 2.0+, Opera 9.0+.
• Small code size.
• Works with jQuery 1.2.6+ (jQuery 1.4.1+ needed with some widgets).
• Works with jQuery 1.9+ ($.browser.msie was removed; needed in the original version).

Licensing

• Copyright (c) 2007 Christian Bach.
• Original examples and docs at: http://tablesorter.com.
• Dual licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses.

Special Thanks

• Big shout-out to Nick Craver for getting rid of the eval() function that was previously needed for multi-column sorting.
• Also big thanks to thezoggy for helping with code, themes and providing valuable feedback.
• And, thanks to everyone else that has contributed, and continues to contribute to this forked project!

Change Log

View the complete listing here.

Version 2.8 (3/27/2013)

• Added an updateAll method

  • This method allows you to update the cache with data from both the thead and tbody of the table.
  • The update method only updates the cache from the tbody.
  • This fixes issue #262.

• Added a grouping rows widget:

  • It only works in tablesorter 2.8+ and jQuery v1.7+.
  • This widget was added to a subfolder named widgets within the js directory.
  • A group header is added, after sorting a column, which groups rows that match the selector.
  • Selectors include whole words, letters, numbers and dates (year, month, day, weekday and time).
  • Check out the demo and get more details on how to use the widget there.
  • Thanks to Brian Ghidinelli for sharing his custom widget code.

• Added multiple parsers

  • Month
  • Two digit year (mmddyy, ddmmyy and yymmdd)
  • Weekday
  • Date library (sugar & datejs)
  • ISO 8601 date by Sean Ellingham (no demo, yet)
  • Metric prefixes
  • Ignore leads parser (ignores "A", "An" and "The" in titles)
  • Inputs, checkbox and select parsers. These parsers automatically update on element changes, but requires jQuery 1.7+.

• Tablesorter's "update" method now checks if a column sort has been enabled or disabled:

  • Please note that the sorter precendence (order of priority) is still inforced (reference).

  • So, for example, if you add a "sorter-false" class name to the header, it will disable the column sort if no jQuery data, metadata, headers option or other `"sorter-{some parser}" class name is already in place.

  • To make sure a column becomes disabled, set it's jQuery data, then update:

    $('th:eq(0)').data('sorter', false);
    $('table').trigger('update');
    

  • Thanks to dibs76 for asking about this on StackOverflow.

  • This is also related to issue #262.

• Custom parsers detection now has higher priority over default parsers:

  • If your custom parser just has an is() check that only returns false, nothing will change. You can still set the parser using jQuery data, metadata, the headers option or header class name as usual (in this order of priority).
  • What this means is that if you wrote a custom parser with an is() check (which tests the string and returns a boolean where true shows a match for your parser), it would have previously been checked after all of the default parsers were checked.
  • Now the automatic parser detection works in reverse, from newest (custom parsers) to oldest (default parsers). So the default text and digit parsers will always be checked last.

• The addWidget method will now extend an included options object into the widget options (table.config.widgetOptions).

  • Default widgets will not use this functionality until version 3.0, to keep them backwards compatible.

  • Include any widget options, when writing a new widget, as follows:

    // *******************
    // parameters:
    // table = table object (DOM)
    // c = config object (from table.config)
    // wo = all widget options (from table.config.widgetOptions)
    $.tablesorter.addWidget({
      id: 'myWidget',
      // widget options (added v2.8) - added to table.config.widgetOptions
      options: {
        myWidget_option1 : 'setting1',
        myWidget_option2 : 'setting2'
      },
      // The init function (added v2.0.28) is called only after tablesorter has
      // initialized, but before initial sort & before any of the widgets are applied.
      init: function(table, thisWidget, c, wo){
        // widget initialization code - this is only *RUN ONCE*
        // but in this example, only the format function is called to from here
        // to keep the widget backwards compatible with the original tablesorter
        thisWidget.format(table, config, widgetOptions, true);
      },
      format: function(table, c, wo, initFlag) {
        // widget code to apply to the table *AFTER EACH SORT*
        // the initFlag is true when this format is called from the init
        // function above otherwise initFlag is undefined
        // * see the saveSort widget for a full example *
        // access the widget options as follows:
        if (wo.myWidget_option1 === 'setting1') {
          alert('YAY');
        }
      },
      remove: function(table, c, wo){
        // do what ever needs to be done to remove stuff added by your widget
        // unbind events, restore hidden content, etc.
      }
    });
    

  • Updated the demo showing how you can write your own widget

• Updated all methods to stop event propagation past the table. This prevents sorted inner tables from also sorting the outer table. Fixes issue #263.

• Updated filter widget to restore previous search after an update. Fixes issue #253.

• Updated bower manifest file, thanks to joyvuu-dave for the pull request #252.

• Updated several public methods that require a table element:

  • These methods will now accept either a table DOM element or a jQuery object; previously it would only accept a DOM element.
  • Modified these $.tablesorter functions: isProcessing, clearTableBody, destroy, applyWidget and refreshWidgets.
  • Example: $.tablesorter.destroy( document.getElementById('myTable') ); or $.tablesorter.destroy( $('#myTable') );
  • See issue #243.

• Updated Bootstrap from version 2.1.1 to 2.3.1.

• Fixed issue with bootstrap demo not working in IE7. It was a silly trailing comma. Fixes issue #265.

• Fixed the filter widget to work properly across tbodies. It now leaves non-sortable tbodies intact. Fixes issue #264.

• Fixed the updateCell method which would cause a javascript error when spammed. It would try to resort the table while the tbody was detached.

• Fixed shortDate parser so that it no longer detects semantic version numbers (e.g. "1.0.0").

• Fixed the internal getData() function to properly get dashed class names; e.g. "sorter-my-custom-parser" will look for a parser with an id of "my-custom-parser".

• Fixed IE code examples all appearing in line.

• Did some general code cleanup and rearranging.

Version 2.7.12 (3/1/2013)

• Fixed hiding filter rows when using filter_formatter elements. See issue #250.
• Fixed an issue with updateCell method not removing extra table rows before computing the row index of the cell that was just updated.
• Added an exactMatch option to the html5color filter_formatter function.
• Added missing documentation for the updateCell callback method. It's been there for a while!

Version 2.7.11 (2/24/2013)

• Fixed several javascript errors:

  • Empty cells in a numeric column should no longer cause an error - fixes issue #246.
  • The tablesorter storage function should no longer cause an error when provided an undefined key - fixes issue #244.

• Added saveSortReset method to clear any saved sorts for a specific table. Use it as follows:

  $('table').trigger('saveSortReset');
  

• Added delayed options to several filter formatter functions.

  • Selectors that can be changed quickly - uiSlider, uiRange, uiSpinner, html5Range and html5Number - will now execute the filter query after a short delay.
  • The filter delay time is set in the filter function option filter_searchDelay. The default delay is 300 milliseconds.

Version 2.7.10 (2/22/2013)

• Updated widget storage function to ensure no invalid strings are passed to the $.parseJSON function.
  • Thanks to andriijas for the code suggestion :)
  • Fixes issue #240 & issue #244.
• Updated filter widget:

  • When cell content contains quotes and the filter select is added, the quotes are now properly processed to be included within the options. Fixes issue #242.

  • Empty cells are no longer added to the options. If you want to include empty cells, add the following (see this StackOverflow question):

    <span style="display:none">{empty}</span>
    

    Then you'll get a select dropdown showing {empty} allowing you to select empty content.

Version 2.7.9 (2/20/2013)

• Fixed an issue with the pager targetting an incorrect page when the table starts out empty.
• Get the correct number of columns when widthFixed is true and the first row contains a table. See issue #238.