DataTable external sorting for large tables?

[asavitsky]

Is there a way to delegate the actual sorting to the outside code, rather than it always being sorted by RichFaces? While it might be ok for small result sets, I highly doubt that r:column will be able to sort 1 mil. of records, without bringing down the server :( In this case, I'd rather delegate the sorting to the query that backs the dataTable, only using the RF for the UI part, but it seems that there's no way to accomplish this in 3.2.0 - the same piece of code that triggers the sort UI rendering (either a sortBy or a comparator attribute) also is the one that triggers the RF-internal sorting. Would be great to have a way to use one without the other.

Thanks,

Alex

[nbelaevski]

Alex,

You can implement sorting/filtering in the model in your application and then create something like facelets template to make it look like standard RichFaces sorting if you wish. Use rich-* classes loaded with the help of a4j:loadStyle for that.

[asavitsky]

While this is definitely possible (not sure about the images though), it would be nice to have such an option out-of-the-box, so as not to reinvent the wheel