Updated table component

[kevinlustig]

Per discussion with WRI, I'm going to be starting work on upgrades to the table component.

The main approach question on my end is sorting. I understand the table component is a wrapper around React Virtualized Table, and sorting issues are pretty common there.

One approach would be to build a more complex column configuration into the cw-components table. Right now, we pass only the display labels of the columns to the component. Sorting is based solely on the actual JS type of the data values - i.e., numbers are sorted as numbers but all strings, including numeric strings, are sorted as strings.

A more robust column config object could include a sort type value such as "percent" or "date" to trigger a transformation of some kind for numeric-ish strings prior to sorting. This would allow for a good variety of value types now and good extensibility in the future. The sort type could be provided by the component where each table is implemented (if applicable), or we could add it directly to the values metadata in the dataset to allow WRI to manage it.

Also should keep in mind that this is not strictly a string/number issue. There may be cases where strings also need to be sorted in something other than alpha order (e.g., "Not Implemented", "Partially Implemented", "Fully Implemented".)

Alternatives to consider:

1. Rather than a sort type value, provide a custom sort function for each table instance and/or column. Would probably end up writing the same sort functions again and again, though.
2. Auto-detect the sort type based on common string formats. Does not handle one-offs or slight formatting variations/errors, though

Thoughts or other approaches welcome.

[simaob]

Hey Kevin,

Thanks for this write up. The sort-type seems like a good solution here. Maybe it could be built so that there are a series of pre-existing sorting types (e.g.: numeric, string, percentage, etc), but also allow passing a function to sort it in an ad-hoc way. It would be more work, but make it more resilient.

What do you guys think: @aabdaab and @Bluesmile82?