date format and sorting

hi Tobias,
Thanks for your really quick reply! That’s nice to get a fast response when one is frustrated and stuck.
I got it to work like you suggested, after some hours of struggle, mostly with my database. My table data comes from a database so I modified my SQL query to generate a new column with a date in MM/DD/YYYY format (I tried YYYY/MM/DD first as it was less work for me but apparently that format is not automatically recognized by TablePress/DataTables).
Before hiding the extra MM/DD/YYYY formatted column, which I did not want the user to see, I clicked on it’s sort header and it didn’t work–until I added the data type in the Custom Commands field. But, I also had to add the sorting-on-another-column command to the Custom Commands field. I managed to figure out how to add both and the final command is:
“columnDefs”: [ { “type”: “date”, “targets”: [ 2 ] } , { “orderData”: [ 2 ], “targets”: [ 1 ] } ]

So column 1 is the “bad date” column I want to click-sort on and column 2 is the extra MM/DD/YYYY column hidden by CSS in PluginOptions:
.tablepress .column-3 {
display: none;
}

(currently I only have one table so no table number on the tablepress class)

I just thought I’d add some details here for anyone else who might have a similar problem.

p.s. any chance you can recommend a table plugin where I can edit and add/delete rows?

yes, I want to have some kind of user-editable table that gets saved to the db. I also would like to be able to export the table data in .csv or some parseable format.

I see this plugin, https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-db-table-editor, but don’t know if it’s any good and since you’re a table guru I thought you might be able to recommend something.
There’s also https://wpdatatables.com but it’s $44 and a bit overkill.

ok, thanks anyway & for the sort fix.