Title: Custom Sorting Question
Last modified: February 28, 2020

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# Custom Sorting Question

 *  Resolved [TamerDesigns](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dribgib/)
 * (@dribgib)
 * [6 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-sorting-question/)
 * Hi – love your plugin – had a question about custom sorting.
 * Not entirely sure what I’m doing with this but I’m trying to sort by “strings”
   for heights in feet/inches like so “5-11” for 5 feet 11 inches. Unfortunately
   the default sorting puts 5-11 behind numbers like 5-6 – which makes sense logically.
 * Can I specify a custom sort order using the DataTables extension? I’m a little
   lost – but here’s what I have,
 * “columnDefs”: [ { “type”: “formatted-num”, “targets”: [ 3 ] } ],
    “order”: [ {“
   5-0”: 0, “5-1”: 1, “5-2”: 2, “5-3”: 3, “5-4”: 4, “5-5”: 5, “5-6”: 6, “5-7”: 7,“
   5-8”: 8, “5-9”: 9, “5-10”: 10, “5-11”: 11, “6-0”: 12, “6-1”: 13, “6-2”: 14, “
   6-3”: 15, “6-4”: 16, “6-5”: 17, “6-6”: 18, “6-7”: 19, “6-8”: 20, “6-9”: 21, “
   6-10”: 22, “6-11”: 23, } ]
 * I’m sure my syntax and other things are causing problems – not entirely sure 
   what to change – any help would be great!

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
 * (@tobiasbg)
 * [6 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-sorting-question/#post-12492402)
 * Hi,
 * thanks for your post, and sorry for the trouble.
 * Unfortunately, this idea will not work 🙁 Your best chance for this would be 
   to add another (hidden) column to the table, where you add the height in inches(
   i.e. 12*feet+inches). This will then give the sorting algorithm a number that
   it can sort.
    For more about this solution approach, please see [https://wordpress.org/support/topic/date-order-6/](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/date-order-6/)
   where it is used in a similar way (only for dates instead of height values).
 * Regards,
    Tobias

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Custom Sorting Question’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
 * Last activity: [6 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-sorting-question/#post-12492402)
 * Status: resolved