How to use a table column filter with formatted columns? - sapui5

Question

I have a JSON model which contains, among others, a few date values which are stored as epoch values:
var oData = [{
string : "SomeValue",
date : 1404172800000
}];
When I load my model, I convert this epoch to a proper Javascript Date object using:
for (var i = 0; i < oData .length; i++) {
var dateLong = oData[i].date;
oData[i].date = new Date(dateLong);
}
In my table, I then render the column using a formatter function:
var oDateColumn = new sap.ui.table.Column({
label: new sap.ui.commons.Label({
text: "A Date"
}),
template: (new sap.ui.commons.TextView({
text : {
parts : [date],
formatter : function(oValue) {
if (oValue != undefined) {
var yyyy = oValue.getFullYear().toString();
var mm = (oValue.getMonth()+1).toString(); // getMonth() is zero-based
var dd = oValue.getDate().toString();
return yyyy + '/' + (mm[1]?mm:"0"+mm[0]) + '/' + (dd[1]?dd:"0"+dd[0]);
} else return "";
}
},
textAlign : sap.ui.core.TextAlign.Right
})),
sortProperty : "date",
filterProperty : "date",
filterOperator : sap.ui.model.FilterOperator.EQ
});
This works ok, and the former epoch is now a date which is nicely rendered as '2014/07/01'
However, the filtering is not on the formatted date but on the original Date object -- if I filter on '2014/07/01' I get no results; if I filter on '1404172800000' I get the filtered results...
I tried using a formatter on the filterProperty but I wasn't able to get this to work.
Does anyone know how I can have users filter on the formatted date?

Answer 1

Using a date type might solve this issue
var dateType = new sap.ui.model.type.Date({
pattern: "yyyy/MM/dd"
});
...
sortProperty : "date",
filterProperty : "date",
filterType: dateType
look at this example for a simple use case on birthday column