Plugins/sorting/natural.js

/**
 * Often a list of data which has titles in it (books, albums etc) will have
 * the word "the" at the start of some individual titles, which you don't want
 * to include in your sorting order. This plug-in will strip the word "the"
 * from the start of a string and sort on what is left.
 *  @name Natural sorting
 *  @anchor natrual
 *  @author <a href="http://www.overset.com/2008/09/01/javascript-natural-sort-algorithm/">Jim Palmer</a>
 */

(function() {

/*
 * Natural Sort algorithm for Javascript - Version 0.7 - Released under MIT license
 * Author: Jim Palmer (based on chunking idea from Dave Koelle)
 * Contributors: Mike Grier (mgrier.com), Clint Priest, Kyle Adams, guillermo
 * See: http://js-naturalsort.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/naturalSort.js
 */
function naturalSort (a, b) {
	var re = /(^-?[0-9]+(\.?[0-9]*)[df]?e?[0-9]?$|^0x[0-9a-f]+$|[0-9]+)/gi,
		sre = /(^[ ]*|[ ]*$)/g,
		dre = /(^([\w ]+,?[\w ]+)?[\w ]+,?[\w ]+\d+:\d+(:\d+)?[\w ]?|^\d{1,4}[\/\-]\d{1,4}[\/\-]\d{1,4}|^\w+, \w+ \d+, \d{4})/,
		hre = /^0x[0-9a-f]+$/i,
		ore = /^0/,
		// convert all to strings and trim()
		x = a.toString().replace(sre, '') || '',
		y = b.toString().replace(sre, '') || '',
		// chunk/tokenize
		xN = x.replace(re, '\0$1\0').replace(/\0$/,'').replace(/^\0/,'').split('\0'),
		yN = y.replace(re, '\0$1\0').replace(/\0$/,'').replace(/^\0/,'').split('\0'),
		// numeric, hex or date detection
		xD = parseInt(x.match(hre)) || (xN.length != 1 && x.match(dre) && Date.parse(x)),
		yD = parseInt(y.match(hre)) || xD && y.match(dre) && Date.parse(y) || null;
	// first try and sort Hex codes or Dates
	if (yD)
		if ( xD < yD ) return -1;
		else if ( xD > yD )	return 1;
	// natural sorting through split numeric strings and default strings
	for(var cLoc=0, numS=Math.max(xN.length, yN.length); cLoc < numS; cLoc++) {
		// find floats not starting with '0', string or 0 if not defined (Clint Priest)
		oFxNcL = !(xN[cLoc] || '').match(ore) && parseFloat(xN[cLoc]) || xN[cLoc] || 0;
		oFyNcL = !(yN[cLoc] || '').match(ore) && parseFloat(yN[cLoc]) || yN[cLoc] || 0;
		// handle numeric vs string comparison - number < string - (Kyle Adams)
		if (isNaN(oFxNcL) !== isNaN(oFyNcL)) return (isNaN(oFxNcL)) ? 1 : -1; 
		// rely on string comparison if different types - i.e. '02' < 2 != '02' < '2'
		else if (typeof oFxNcL !== typeof oFyNcL) {
			oFxNcL += ''; 
			oFyNcL += ''; 
		}
		if (oFxNcL < oFyNcL) return -1;
		if (oFxNcL > oFyNcL) return 1;
	}
	return 0;
}

jQuery.extend( jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort, {
	"natural-asc": function ( a, b ) {
		return naturalSort(a,b);
	},

	"natural-desc": function ( a, b ) {
		return naturalSort(a,b) * -1;
	}
} );

}());