In the location hash, the sort parameters are added as &tableID=column,direction, ... ,column,direction (no spaces). This option allows changing the column-direction separator, a comma by default, into the chosen separator.

*NOTE* Do not set this option to use a hash (#), ampersand (&) or equal sign (=) as it will interfere with how the hash parameters are set up.

In the location hash, the sort parameters are added as &tableID=column,direction, ... ,column,direction (no spaces). The tableID is set by this option.

This option setting is prioritized over the actual table ID attribute. If neither are set, the tableID will be set as the table's zero-based index on the page.

sort2Hash_tableID > table.id attribute > table index

Please be aware that if the column text contains spaces or special characters, they will be encoded in the URL. So, "First £$€¤¥¢ Name" will become "First%20%C2%A3$%E2%82%AC%C2%A4%C2%A5%C2%A2%20Name". This would make the hash very difficult to read.

Further processing of this header cell text can be done using the sort2Hash_processHeaderText function.

Use this function to perform any processing on the header cell text, as desired.

At this point, the header cell text has not been encoded.

Here is one example:

sort2Hash_processHeaderText : function( text, config, columnIndex ) {
  // remove all non-alphanumeric characters (including spaces)
  return text.replace( /[^a-z0-9]/gi, '' );
}

Another example:

sort2Hash_processHeaderText : function( text, config, columnIndex ) {
  // completely custom text to use for the hash
  // this method assumes that the table layout is constant
  // (i.e. columns are not added, removed or rearranged)
  return [ 'first', 'last', 'age', 'total', 'disc', 'date' ][ columnIndex ];
}

Only the first two values will be used from this array. The first value is assigned to ascending sorts and the second is assigned to descending sorts.

Use the option as follows:

sort2Hash_directionText : [ 'asc', 'desc' ]

*NOTE* When converting the hash into a value, if the direction hash does not match the second value ('desc' in the example above), it will fallback to an ascending sort no matter what text in contained within the first value.