Sort child elements by date with jQuery

Question

I'm trying to sort some child elements of the div #rgMatches with the class .GroupItem. Some of these child elements contain a date and time as text. For instance 2022-09-24 16:45:00. Some child elements do not contain the date & time. They should not be sorted.

With the following script it works fine. The newest item was placed at the first position. Issue: If I run the script for the second time it changes the sorting order. For instance, I have 4 items with a date. Running the script again the newest item gets position 4.

What's going wrong? Thank you for your hints

function sortingContacts() {
  $('#rgMatches .rows .GroupItem').sort(function(a, b) {
    if ($(a).find('.creationDate').text() != '') {
      return new Date($(a).find('.creationDate').text()) < new Date($(b).find('.creationDate').text()) ? 1 : -1;
    } else {
      return;
    }
  }).appendTo('#rgMatches .rows');
}



  
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:10:00
      
    
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:05:23
      
    
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:05:22
      
    
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:05:27

Rory McCrossan · Answer

There's two issues in your code. Firstly, you need to check that the .creationDate element has content in both the a and b elements. Secondly you need to also return a value in the case where it doesn't, not just a plain return; statement. In the example below I used 0, but this can be amended to 1 or -1 as necessary for your use case.

Note in the example how clicking the 'Sort' button multiple times doesn't change the outcome.

function sortingContacts() {
  $('#rgMatches .rows .GroupItem').sort((a, b) => {
    let aText = $(a).find('.creationDate').text();
    let bText = $(b).find('.creationDate').text();
    
    if (aText != '' && bText != '') {
      return new Date(aText) < new Date(bText) ? 1 : -1;
    } else {
      return 0;
    }
  }).appendTo('#rgMatches .rows');
}

$('button').on('click', sortingContacts);



  
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:10:00
      
    
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:05:23
      
    
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:05:22
      
    
    
      
        2022-09-24 16:05:27

Sort child elements by date with jQuery

1 Answers