Eric Dubru

I am also a beginner. I had the same problem. I have developped a function and it's possible to sort a table with ~ 7 000 rows in less than 1 second.

It's the following function with a few comments.

Eric

// 'Table': table element
// 'FirstRow': first row to sort (0 if no header and first row must also be sorted)
// 'ColSort': order number of the column used to sort (0 for he first column)
// 'VMode': mode (0: alphabetical, 1: numeric)
// 'VInv': order (true: ascending, false: descending)
// Other parameters are possible (ex.: lowercase/uppercase/with case, detect not numeric values,...)

function NewSortTable(Table, FirstRow, ColSort, VMode, VInv) {
//var T0 = GiveTime()
var i, ValA, RowsDat = [], RId, Ce, Row, TabRows = Table.getElementsByTagName('TR') // Table and table rows
// Read rows data (value of the cell and id of the row)
for (i = FirstRow; i < TabRows.length; i++)
    {
    Row = TabRows; RId = Row.id; if (String(RId) == '') {RId = 'TmpSort' + String(i); Row.id = RId;}
    Ce = Row.getElementsByTagName('TD')[ColSort];
    if (VMode == 0) {ValA = Ce.innerHTML; ValA = ValA.toLowerCase();} // Alphabetical sorting - Use displayed value in lowercase
    if (VMode == 1) {ValA = Number(Ce.getAttribute('data-nv'));} // Numbers sorting - Use actual memorized value
    RowsDat.push([ValA, RId]);
    }
// Sort rows data (value and id) by value
if (VMode == 0) // Alphabetical  sorting
    {
    if (!VInv) {RowsDat.sort(function(a,b) {if (a[0] > b[0]) {return 1}; if (a[0] < b[0]) {return -1}; return 0})} // Normal order
    if (VInv)  {RowsDat.sort(function(a,b) {if (a[0] < b[0]) {return 1}; if (a[0] > b[0]) {return -1}; return 0})} // Reverse order
    }
if (VMode == 1) // Numbers sorting
    {
    if (!VInv) {RowsDat.sort(function(a,b) {return a[0] - b[0]});} // Normal order
    if (VInv)  {RowsDat.sort(function(a,b) {return b[0] - a[0]});} // Reverse order
    }
// Change the place of the rows
for (i = 0; i < RowsDat.length; i++)
    {
    RId = RowsDat[1]; Row = document.getElementById(RId); if (RId.substring(0, 7) == 'TmpSort') {Row.removeAttribute('id');}
    Table.insertBefore(Row, TabRows[FirstRow]);
    }
//alert((GiveTime() - T0) / 1000 + ' seconds')
}