Hi, Russ 

Sorry for the delayed answer.

-

Yes, on the front-end side, as you pointed out,

the only way you can sort the table by multiple columns with plugin's built-in functionality would be if you hold down SHIFT and click on the header of 2(or more) columns.

And correct, this means that, after the table loads, a page visitor has to do this.

But, in case you need this to be "pre-sorted before the page loads", there is a custom workaround, with an SQL Query;

we are not suggesting to use ORDER BY at all in queries, because wpDataTables plugin is adding it dynamically based on what is set to be default sorting column,

but if you disable the Sorting option for wpDataTable in the table's settings,

and create wpDataTable from SQL query e.g:

SELECT * FROM `my_table` ORDER BY ColumnB ASC, ColumnC ASC

It will create and show wpDataTable with multi-column sorting, but you will not be able to use Sorting anymore for this table from within the plugin's table settings.

I hope that makes sense, let me know if that can work for your use-case.

Thank you

Hi, Russ 

You're welcome, i am happy to help

- Regarding the second question,

no, unfortunately, that is not possible.

When working with Google Spreadsheets, if you link the source Sheet with a table,  in that case, any editing you do on the source Sheet will reflect the output table,

but then when you use this method,  it will not be editable on WordPress and we can't pull an easy SQL Query from it.

It will not create a new individual table in your database ( such as imported for Manual table),

and this table won't have its own set of columns and rows,

but their data is stored in database table wp_wpdatatables_rows. 

So, pulling this kind of data from the database is a bit more complex because this database table stores data in JSON format, you can't  make an easy SQL Query to pull data, such as from Manual Tables ( for them you can just go like "SELECT * FROM ManualTableName")

-

So, you would have to choose, either to link the table to source Sheet,

or to import it to make a Manual Table - then you will be able to pull an easy SQL Query table from that Manual Table.

We can't have both functionalities at the same time.

Let me know if that makes sense and if you have any questions.Thank you

Hi, Russ 

I apologise for the waiting time,

and it seems that i did not initially understand your use-case correctly,  

i thought that you needed to have an SQL based Table from a Google Spreadsheet, but it seems you needed a solution for custom sorting on the table on multiple columns.

-

With the current built-in capabilities of our plugin, this is the logic and a workaround we have for sorting:

Each column has a “Default sorting column” switch. If you enable this switch for one of the columns, a selectbox will appear with options – “Ascending” and “Descending”, where you can choose the sorting direction . More about sorting with our plugin features you can read in our docs here - https://wpdatatables.com/documentation/table-features/sorting/

2. - The only way how we can sort the table by multiple columns with plugin's built-in functionality would be, on the front-end, if you hold down SHIFT and click on the header of 2(or more) columns. ( in your case column B, then C)

Basically, this means that, after the table loads, a page visitor has to do this, 

click on the C column whilst holding SHIFT(added the clicked column as a secondary, tertiary etc ordering column)."

But, in case you need this to be "already done before the page loads", there is a custom workaround, with an SQL Query;

we are not suggesting to use ORDER BY at all in queries, because wpDataTables plugin is adding it dynamically based on what is set to be default sorting column.

but if you disable the Sorting option for wpDataTable and create wpDataTable from SQL query e.g:

SELECT * FROM `my_table` ORDER BY ColumnB ASC, ColumnC ASC

It will create and show wpDataTable with multi column sorting, but you will not be able to use Sorting anymore for this table.

-

That was just the general information of how we usually have to use the sorting on our tables,

but i see that you obviously made a workaround with sorting directly from the Google Spreadsheet source.

Thank you very much for sharing your workaround solution for this type of sorting.

We will pass this to our 2nd level Team and to our developers,  they will check it out and i believe it will help to improve our plugin in the future.

At the moment, when you use a Google Spreadsheet with formulas, the safest option is to make a new tab with an "importrange" function as explained on our Documentation here,

but it seems that you found a perfect solution for your use-case, so , as the saying goes "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".

I am happy to see that you managed this solution, of course.

Thanks again, and please don't hesitate to reach out to us with new tickets if you have any new questions, and we will be happy to assist or advise.