Custom column filter on a formatted column - slickgrid

Question

I need help using a custom column filter for handling JS objects.
I have a slickgrid table where the values in one column are JS object:
[
{ id: "1234", text: "Batman"},
{ id: "2345", text: "Robin"}
]
I use a custom formatter to smash the object into a string:
// convert [{id:string, text:string}...] to string
const optionFormatter: Formatter = (row, cell, value, columnDef, dataContext: any) =>
value ? value.map(o => o.text).join(', ') : '';
Which displays in slickgrid as
Batman, Robin
my slickgrid options use gridmenu and enables column filtering:
this.gridOptions = {
enableGridMenu: true,
enableFiltering: true,
enableAutoResize: true,
enableColumnReorder: true
};
My columnDef enables filtering for this column:
{
id: 'owners',
name: 'Owners',
field: 'owners',
sortable: false,
formatter: optionFormatter,
filterable: true
}
Everything works if the value in the cell is a string, but the filter doesn't work if the cell is an object. I assume the filter is searching the pre-formatted value.
Is there a way to provide the column with a custom filter function that knows how to search the JS object for the query string? For example if I could just search the JSON.stringify(value), that would be good enough.
Alternatively, this answer describes how I could use the formatter to store the formatted text as a different string property in dataContext. If I do that, how do I specify which property to filter, seeing as it is a different property than the column field?

Answer 1

I found a workaround.
preprocess my data, calling JSON.stringify on all values that are objects:
flattenFeature(f: Feature): any{
var res = {};
for (var prop in f) {
res[prop] = (typeof f[prop] === 'object') ? JSON.stringify(f[prop]) : f[prop];
}
return res;
}
Then in my formatter, I parse the json, before formatting:
// convert [{id:string, text:string}...] to string
const optionFormatter: Formatter = (row, cell, value, columnDef, dataContext) =>
value ? JSON.parse(value).map(o => o.text).join(', ') : '';
This allows the standard string filter to search the stringify'd JSON