Sort a set of li tags alphanumerically

Question

I\'ve been playing around trying to get a function that will sort a selection of li tags by their content but currently to no avail (at least no speed/accuracy);

Answer 1

If you want to sort it with javascript, you need a method/function to sort it. And you need to choose when it will be sorted: loading, clicking on a button, etc...

The other possibility is to sort before sending the html: it depends on your server language. Php, java, asp, etc... ? But you can use the same link to find the best algorithm for your needs.

Answer 2

I'm not completely sure what your alphaNumSort function does, but a simple string comparison may be enough.

var li = $('#licontainer li').get();

// sort the list items based on the contents of a nested strong tag
li.sort(function(a, b) {
    a = $('strong', a).text();
    b = $('strong', b).text();

    // you may want to process the text values further here, perhaps
    // running it through $.trim, reducing whitespace sequences with
    // a regular expression, or lower- or upper-casing letters to
    // make the comparison case-insensitive.

    return (a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0);
});

// reinsert the list items in their new order
$('#licontainer').append(li);

This should be considerably faster than your temporary list method, as it performs fewer DOM operations. The use of native string comparisons should also be a fair bit faster than your current sorting algorithm, but if it is doing something specific that I have missed update the return statement to utilize it (keeping the preceding lines).

return alphaNumSort(a, b);

If this is still too slow you could likely improve performance even more by hiding the list before manipulating it, preventing the browser from performing unnecessary repaints.

var li = $('#licontainer').hide().find('li').get();

// ...

$('#licontainer').append(li).show();

Answer 3

var sortList = function () {
    var ul = document.getElementsByTagName("ul"),
    ol = document.getElementsByTagName("ol"),
    sort = function (x) {
        var a, li;
        for (a = 0; a < x.length; a += 1) {
            li = x[a].getElementsByTagName("li");
            li = li.sort();
            x[a].innerHTML = li.join("");
        }
    };
    sort(ul);
    sort(ol);
};