You could deal with a json array and the sort function. It is a pretty easy maintanable structure to manipulate (ex: sorting).
Untested, but here's the idea. That would support multiple ordering and sequential ordering if you pass in a array in which you put the columns in the order they should be ordered by.
var DATA_TABLE = {
{name: 'George', lastname: 'Blarr', age:45},
{name: 'Bob', lastname: 'Arr', age: 20}
//...
};
function sortDataTable(arrayColNames, asc) { // if not asc, desc
for (var i=0;i<arrayColNames.length;i++) {
var columnName = arrayColNames[i];
DATA_TABLE = DATA_TABLE.sort(function(a,b){
if (asc) {
return (a[columnName] > b[columnName]) ? 1 : -1;
} else {
return (a[columnName] < b[columnName]) ? 1 : -1;
}
});
}
}
function updateHTMLTable() {
// update innerHTML / textContent according to DATA_TABLE
// Note: textContent for firefox, innerHTML for others
}
Now let's imagine you need to order by lastname, then name, and finally by age.
var orderAsc = true;
sortDataTable(['lastname', 'name', 'age'], orderAsc);
It should result in something like :
{name: 'Jack', lastname: 'Ahrl', age: 20},
{name: 'Jack', lastname: 'Ahrl', age: 22},
//...