Programmatically set sorting Column and Direction

[Olliebaba]

WHICH VERSION OF REACT ARE YOU USING?

Officially Supported:
[ ] v0.14.x

Community Supported:
[X ] v15.0.x

WHICH BROWSER ARE YOU USING?

Officially Supported:
[ ] IE 9 / IE 10 / IE 11
[ ] Edge
[X ] Chrome

Should work:
[ ] Firefox
[ ] Safari

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I'm submitting a ... (check one with "x")

[ ] bug report
[ X] feature request
[ ] support request => Please do not submit support request here, instead see https://github.com/adazzle/react-data-grid/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Current behavior
Currently a user must click a column's header to trigger the handleSort method. (PR #649 addresses how to set initial sort through getInitialState)

Expected/desired behavior
Create external access to trigger sorting.

What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?
I would like to have access to this method so that I can set the column caret from a parent container in place of forcing CSS styles to show which column the data is sorted by.

I have a form which searches for contacts via various fields. I would like to sort the data based on which input fields have value. Since I have no means of triggering handleChange, the only way I am able to display sorting column and direction is by having additional checks on the parent's state and forcing CSS styles for the carets.

[Olliebaba]

After thinking about this for a while, I realized it might just be better to simply allow to take sorting Column and Direction as props. (Not just for initialization as in PR #649 )

[jrnail23]

@Olliebaba, we're looking for generally the same thing, except we need to do multi-column sorting (i.e., sort by lastName ASC then by firstName ASC then by birthDate DESC)

[reno004]

@Olliebaba @jrnail123
i need to do multi-column sorting..can you please post how to accomplish it

[Olliebaba]

@jrnail23 and @reno004 - I decided to write my own table plugin for the project i'm working on because requirements kept on drifting further from how react-data-grid operates. As far as multi column sorting, that would be in your .sort() method itself. You will need to have nested ifs to do so. Example

[reno004]

@Olliebaba sorry for being naive....how do we show the multiple columns as sorted in the grid.

Thanks in advance

[Olliebaba]

@reno004 - when you say multi-column sorting, how do you mean? If you post your question with more detail on stack overflow, I can try my best to help you but this isn't the correct platform to get into such details. Post on stack overflow and then reply with the link please.

[amanmahajan7]

This feature has been merger #649

[milkersarac]

I need this merger, when will you publish next npm package containing this merge? Thanks.