Custom Parser for jQuery Tablesorter

I had a similar issue and discovered the textExtraction option which is recommended when your cells contain markup. However, it works perfectly well as a pre-format formatter!

$('table').tablesorter({
  textExtraction: function(s) {
    var text = $(s).text();
    if (text.charAt(0) === '$') {
      return text.replace(/[^0-9-.]/g, '');
    } else {
      return text;
    }
  }
});

The first option is to give the columns that have currency values the additional class "{'sorter':'currency'}". Also make sure you're including the plugin metadata, which tablesorter supports. This will pull in the per element options and explicitly tell tablesorter how to sort.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/jquery/tablesorter/green/style.css" />
<script src="/js/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>
<script src="/js/jquery.ui.core.js"></script>
<script src="/js/jquery.metadata.js"></script>
<script src="/js/jquery.tablesorter.js"></script>

<script>
    $(document).ready(function()
    {
    $("#table").tablesorter();
    }
    );
    </script>
</head>
<table id="table" class="tablesorter">
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th class="{'sorter':'currency'}">Currency</th>
    <th>Integer</th>
    <th>String</th>
  </tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
  <td class="{'sorter':'currency'}">$3</td>
  <td>3</td>
  <td>three</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="{'sorter':'currency'}">-$3</td>
  <td>-3</td>
  <td>negative three</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="{'sorter':'currency'}">$1</td>
  <td>1</td>
  <td>one</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Also, there's a bug in the function to format currency: it doesn't handle negative numbers.

I've filed a bug, and am working on landing a patch.

The second option is to apply this fix to your copy of tablesorter. Once you've applied the fix, you won't need to specify the currency sorter in the th or td's(specifying in the td's is over-kill anyway).

Edit line 724 of jquery.tablesorter.js:

return $.tablesorter.formatFloat(s.replace(new RegExp(/[^0-9.]/g),""));

change to:

return $.tablesorter.formatFloat(s.replace(new RegExp(/[^-0-9.]/g),""));

case:

• values: $-3,$1,$3

• current asc order: $1,$3,$-3

• expected asc order $-3,$1,$3

case:

• values: -$3,$1,$3

• current asc order: $1,$3,-$3

• expected asc order $-3,$1,$3