jqGrid columnChooser - unselected columns on the right in alphabetical order - jqgrid

Question

I have been working with the jqGrid a lot and everything works (sorting, reordering of columns, adding/remove columns in the columnChooser, reordering columns in the columnChooser, ...). However there is one minor thing.
It appears, the initial list of the colModel that I pass to the grid contains the columns in the order they are displayed including a list of the possible hidden columns, e.g. columns:
Id, Name, Date(hidden), AValue, BValue, CValue(hidden)
Now when I open the columnChooser, the visible columns are shown on the left in the expected order as they appear in the grid. The not visible columns appear on the right as: Date, CValue. If I remove all columns from the grid, then the order of the unselected columns on the right of the column chooser dialog is as defined in the colModel: Id, Name, Date, ...
I would like to see the selected columns in the order as they appear on the screen for reordering, but I would like to have the unselected columns on the right always appear in alphabetical order - is that somehow possible?

Answer 1

I had trouble getting this to work but eventually decided to add my own event handlers to the dialog to manually sort the right side.
//Add the button to the jqGrid toolbar
$('#MyGridId').jqGrid('navButtonAdd', '#MyGridToolbar', {
buttonicon: 'ui-icon-transferthick-e-w',
caption: 'Select Columns',
title: 'Select Columns',
onClickButton: function () {
$(this).jqGrid('columnChooser', {
done: function (perm) {
if (perm) {
this.jqGrid('remapColumns', perm, true);
}
}
});
//Setup custom event bindings and give the right side an initial sort
BindColPickerActions($.jgrid.jqID(this.id));
SortColPickerAvailable($.jgrid.jqID(this.id));
}
});
//function to add click event bindings to the dialog actions
function BindColPickerActions(gridId) {
var colpickerId = 'colchooser_' + gridId;
//When moving an item from selected to available (Hiding)
$('#' + colpickerId + ' .selected a:not(.SortModifier)').bind('click', function(){
SortColPickerAvailable(gridId);
BindColPickerActions(gridId);
});
//When moving an item from available to selected (Showing)
$('#' + colpickerId + ' .available a:not(.SortModifier)').bind('click', function(){
BindColPickerActions(gridId);
});
//add a class to the actions that have been modified to keep track
$('#colchooser_' + colpickerId + ' .available a:not(.SortModifier), #' + colpickerId + ' .available a:not(.SortModifier)').addClass('SortModifier');
}
//function to sort the available list
function SortColPickerAvailable(gridId) {
//get the list of li items
var colpickerId = 'colchooser_' + gridId;
var available = $('#' + colpickerId + ' .available .connected-list');
var li = available.children('.ui-element');
//detatch and sort the li items
li.detach().sort(function(a, b) {
return $(a).attr('title').toUpperCase().localeCompare($(b).attr('title').toUpperCase());
});
//re-attach the li items
available.append(li);
}