Column custom sort: pass row data to comparator

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[X] feature request
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Current behavior When TableColumn.comparator is used, arguments passed to the comparator are values of that column.

Expected behavior It would be nice to have an option to receive row data to comparator.

Due to backward compatibility it would be nice to add another Input to TableColumn, e.g. rowComparator(row, row), not to break legacy code.

What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?

My specific case is I am displaying time (duration) in a column (e.g. “1d 20h 14m”, “5h 20m”). In other column there is the same value, as number in seconds. Obviously, alphanumeric sorting is wrong in this case and I need to sort the column by seconds.

Since comparator feeds me with string value I must parse the duration back to seconds despite the fact that the value is already present in the table model.

I believe this would be handy in other cases when sortable value is already present however the displayed value is somehow “humanized”.

• Table version: 9.3.0

• Angular version:

4.1.3 but that is not relevant I believe

[Ryan-Haines]

For anyone else confused as to how to use a custom comparator in a template, you can pass the row data to the comparator by putting prop="" in the template, like this:

<ngx-datatable-column name="Reviewed" prop="" [comparator]="sortReviewedComparator">
	<ng-template let-row="row" ngx-datatable-cell-template>
		<span {{(row.numReviewed/row.numEntries)*100||0}}% Reviewed">{{row.numReviewed}}/{{row.numEntries}}</span>
	</ng-template>
</ngx-datatable-column>

[Ecksters]

Latest version has this feature, both rows are passed as the 3rd and 4th parameters to the comparator function, although I don’t think it’s been pushed to NPM yet.