Override the sort icon on columns

[Eithcowich]

The table columns display a 'Sort' tooltip. In many cases overriding it with an explanation of what the column data means is crucial. Is there a way to do it?

[patorjk]

Yes, see columnHeaderTooltip in the textLabels option:

https://github.com/gregnb/mui-datatables#localization

[Eithcowich]

How do I call this for an individual column? I need different tooltips to many of them, so I can explain what's the meaning of the data.

[patorjk]

The function gives you the column object, so you can change the tooltip based on what the column is. Example:

columnHeaderTooltip: column => {
    if (column.name === 'type') return 'Type!';
    return `Sort for ${column.label}`;
}

[Eithcowich]

I can successfully change the toolTip or the noMatch but I'm not seeing this function getting called:

       columnHeaderTooltip : (column) => {
              console.log('column ' + column);
              if (column.name === 'daoPlatform') return 'This is the DAO platform';
              return ( <span>{column.label}</span> )
       },

and the sorting tooltip doesn't change.

I'm on version 2.6.4. I tried 3.2 but too many things changed and we're in a tight production deadline right now so I cannot upgrade yet.

[patorjk]

I would recommending upgrading. 3.x really doesn't require much other than Material UI v4 (most of the deprecation notices are optional).

Unfortunately the pervious maintainer did not mention columnHeaderTooltip in the release notes, so it's unclear when that got added in. You try upgrading to v2.14.0 (this was the last verison done by the previous maintainer). That version would probably have less updates that you would have to do. However, I wouldn't be able to help you if you ran into any issues.

[Eithcowich]

OK, I'll try that.

Re V3, the sorting order seems broken. When I set it for the whole table as desc it works for the initial column, but then every click sorts the table on the relevant column asc. I tried playing with it a bit and see if I can change it in the customSort function but couldn't really spend the time and went back to my previous version.

[patorjk]

It’s not broken. Someone noted that the standard way of sorting a table was to first do asc and then on second click do desc, so the behavior was changed for v3.

[Eithcowich]

OH I see, cool. It depends on the use case I think. If you're ranking items like we do in https://DeepDAO.io (see your excellent widget in action!) then you always want the desc sorting to be first. But I guess there are other use cases.

[patorjk]

I could put in an orderSequence option (similar to: https://datatables.net/examples/advanced_init/sort_direction_control.html), that way the sort sequence could be controlled.

[patorjk]

I added a new option called sortDescFirst in 3.3.0 that will columns to sort by desc first.