Preamble

At times you may wish to change the default sorting direction for columns (all or some of them) to be 'descending' rather than DataTables' default ascending. This can be done through the use of the aoColumns[].asSorting initialisation parameter. This parameter also allows you to limit the sorting to a single direction, or you could add complex behaviour to the sorting interaction.

The example below shows:

• Column 1 - default sorting
• Column 2 - ascending sorting only
• Column 3 - descending sorting, followed by ascending and then ascending again
• Column 4 - descending sorting only
• Column 5 - default sorting

It's worth noting that I don't have a good use case for when you might what to use the complex behaviour that is possible with this, but it is there should you want to use it!

Live example

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#example').dataTable( {
		"aoColumns": [
			null,
			{ "asSorting": [ "asc" ] },
			{ "asSorting": [ "desc", "asc", "asc" ] },
			{ "asSorting": [ "desc" ] },
			null
		]
	} );
} );

Other examples