QTableView sort column data by UserRole

Question

I have a QStandardItemModel piped into a QTableView. One of the columns in my model contains dates which have user-friendly displayData and computer-friendly userData. So for example one QStandardItem might display a string like 22 Nov 2018 but the userdata would look like 324586 (seconds since the epoch). However when I sort the column it of course sorts by the displayData. How can I force the table to sort by userData instead?

Answer 1

You have to use setSortRole():

from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets
import random

DATECOLUMN = 1

class MainWindow(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super(MainWindow, self).__init__(parent)
        self._tableView = QtWidgets.QTableView()
        self.setCentralWidget(self._tableView)

        self._model = QtGui.QStandardItemModel(10, 4) 
        self._tableView.setModel(self._model)

        now_second = QtCore.QDateTime.currentDateTime().toSecsSinceEpoch()
        for i in range(self._model.rowCount()):
            for j in range(self._model.columnCount()):
                if j == DATECOLUMN:
                    t = QtCore.QDateTime.fromSecsSinceEpoch(random.randint(0, now_second))
                    text = t.toString("dd MMM yyyy")
                    it = QtGui.QStandardItem(text)
                    it.setData(t.toSecsSinceEpoch(), QtCore.Qt.UserRole)
                else:
                    it = QtGui.QStandardItem("{}-{}".format(i, j))
                self._model.setItem(i, j, it)

        self._model.setSortRole(QtCore.Qt.UserRole)
        self._model.sort(DATECOLUMN, QtCore.Qt.AscendingOrder)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
    w = MainWindow()
    w.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

Although I prefer to save the QDateTime directly and use a delegate to show the data with the format you want.

from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets
import random

DATECOLUMN = 1

class DateDelegate(QtWidgets.QStyledItemDelegate):
    def displayText(self, value, locale):
        return locale.toString(value, "dd MMM yyyy")

class MainWindow(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super(MainWindow, self).__init__(parent)
        self._tableView = QtWidgets.QTableView()
        self.setCentralWidget(self._tableView)

        self._model = QtGui.QStandardItemModel(10, 4) 
        self._tableView.setModel(self._model)
        delegate = DateDelegate(self._tableView)
        self._tableView.setItemDelegateForColumn(DATECOLUMN, delegate)

        now_second = QtCore.QDateTime.currentDateTime().toSecsSinceEpoch()
        for i in range(self._model.rowCount()):
            for j in range(self._model.columnCount()):
                if j == DATECOLUMN:
                    t = QtCore.QDateTime.fromSecsSinceEpoch(random.randint(0, now_second))
                    it = QtGui.QStandardItem()
                    it.setData(t, QtCore.Qt.DisplayRole)
                else:
                    it = QtGui.QStandardItem("{}-{}".format(i, j))
                self._model.setItem(i, j, it)

        self._model.sort(DATECOLUMN, QtCore.Qt.AscendingOrder)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
    w = MainWindow()
    w.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())