JQuery/Javascript: Client side modification of asp.net datagrid output to allow tablesorter to work.

Question

The output of the asp.net datagrid doesn't include the thead and tbody elements required for the jquery tablesorter to work.

E.g. it looks like this:

 <table>
  <tr>this is my header row</tr>
  <tr>content row 1</tr>
  <tr>content row 2</tr>
  <tr>content row 3</tr>
  ...
  <tr>content row n</tr>
 </table>

and it needs to look like this:

 <table>
  <thead>
   <tr>this is my header row</tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
   <tr>content row 1</tr>
   <tr>content row 2</tr>
   <tr>content row 3</tr>
   ...
   <tr>content row n</tr>
  </tbody>
 </table>

I knocked up the following javascript to dynamically insert them, but the table is still not sortable. I've confirmed that if I manually insert the thead and tbody tags directly into the output html, the table is sortable, but when I try to do it using the DOM, it doesn't seem to work.

What am I missing?

 $(document).ready(function() 
  { 
   var tbl = document.getElementById('mytableid');

   // new header and body elements to be inserted
   var tblHead = document.createElement('thead');
   var tblBody = document.createElement('tbody');
   // get the first row and the remainder
   var headerRow = $(tbl).find('tr:first')
   var bodyRows  = $(tbl).find('tr:not(:first)');

   // remove the original rows
   headerRow.remove();
   bodyRows.remove();

   // add the rows to the header and body respectively
   $(tblHead).append(headerRow);
   $(tblBody).append(bodyRows);

   // add the head and body into the table
   $(tbl).append(tblHead);
   $(tbl).append(tblBody);

   // apply the tablesorter
   $(tbl).tablesorter(); 
  } 
 );

EDIT: I actually solved the problem before I posted the question, but I thought I'd go ahead and post it anyway, as it may be useful to others... See my answer below.

Answer 1

Apparently, a phantom <tbody> element appears in the output. The trick is to ensure that it is removed before adding in the generated ones... Hopefully this will be useful to someone!

 $(document).ready(function() 
  { 
   var tbl = document.getElementById('mytableid');

   // new header and body elements to be inserted
   var tblHead = document.createElement('thead');
   var tblBody = document.createElement('tbody');
   // get the first row and the remainder
   var headerRow = $(tbl).find('tr:first')
   var bodyRows  = $(tbl).find('tr:not(:first)');

   // remove the original rows
   headerRow.remove();
   bodyRows.remove();

   // SOLUTION HERE: 
   // remove any existing thead/tbody elements
   $(tbl).find('tbody').remove();
   $(tbl).find('thead').remove();

   // add the rows to the header and body respectively
   $(tblHead).append(headerRow);
   $(tblBody).append(bodyRows);

   // add the head and body into the table
   $(tbl).append(tblHead);
   $(tbl).append(tblBody);

   // apply the tablesorter
   $(tbl).tablesorter(); 
  } 
 );

Answer 2

The above code still doesn't address the cells in the header. To convert them from tags to tags you can add this:

$('thead tr td').each(function(i) { $(this).replaceWith("<th>" + $(this).html() + "<\/th>"); });