Fun with CSS :before and :after!

Anyone that's ever done front-end work has probably worked with jQuery and its awesome DataTables plugin. You've probably also run up against the limitations of DataTables, namely that it sorts columns based on ALL of the data you put inside the table cells. In other words, extra characters inside a table cell can confuse the plugin and it may not sort exactly the way you want it to.

For example:

You'll notice that the balance and payment columns have a dollar sign and the rate column has a percent sign. Though these characters may not affect the sorting, other characters could because it turns a numeric sort into a text sort. While we may be okay here, best practice would dictate that we avoid adding any extra characters in our sortable data.

In the image above, the dollar signs and percent signs aren't seen by the DOM nor by the DataTables plugin because I am using the CSS :before and :after tags to add them in as a style.

Here's the HTML:

Here's the CSS:

That's it! You could apply this to any content you want to prepend or append to your columns and it will not affect the way DataTables handles sorting.

Comments

jQuery noUIslider Pip Label Customization

Recently, I was tasked with creating a slider element for a user to select their credit rating, of which the user can select from among: 'Poor', 'Fair', 'Good', 'Excellent' and 'Not Sure'. Several problems presented themselves here: A drop-down box would be better, but that's not what the requirements specified. I already have several numeric sliders on my page and I want them all to match. I selected the jQuery noUi Slider library to create the numeric sliders. noUi Slider does not support string values - only numeric values. The "pips" (slider scale/labels) also does not support string values. Since the solution involved shifting my mindset, I wanted to document it here for future reference and maybe to help someone facing the same requirements. Here's my solution: Since there is really no numeric correlation to credit score (especially considering one of the options is "Not Sure"), I will just u

How to Create a new Case Record Type in Salesforce

Here are the specific steps for adding a case record type. Some steps may vary by organization but the process should be pretty similar to what is shown here. 1) Create a new page layout 2) Add any new case statuses to picklist 3) Edit case statuses that should indicate case is "closed" 4) Add any new case types to picklist 5) Add any new case reasons to picklist 6) Add any new case origins to picklist 7) Add any new fields to case object 8) Under Record Types, ensure the picklists have the correct values (i.e. - Reason/Type/Origin) 9) Within the Type field, edit "Reason" field dependencies matrix and add new reason(s) to types 10) Create a new support process (if not reusing an existing one) 11) Create the new record type (enable for all profiles) 12) Finalize the page layout (if needed) and check "Default" in Case Assignment checkbox under Layout Properties 13) Create approval queues (if needed) 14) Set up approv

View Helpers - Custom Output Parser

I was reviewing some blade view code recently and decided it was too verbose. There were some long output statements that were duplicated throughout the view and that always signals a need to refactor or come up with a better method. So I wanted to share (or at least document) what I came up with here. First, the issue: fields stored as boolean "0/1" in the database must be output in "Yes/No" format. Plus, if the field is blank (or null), that must be reflected as well. Add to that the uncertainty of whether the production Microsoft Azure database will return a string or integer value for 1 or 0. This problem necessitates a blade statement like: {{ $object->property === null || $object->property === "" ? "" : $object->property == 1 ? 'Yes' : 'No' }} Like I said...verbose! One solution might be to create a Laravel accessor for the boolean field in the model. But that would mean that if I want the actual boolean

Developer Thought Stream

Search This Blog