Extending List.js with sort on date values

I applied List.js for user-interactive filtering and sorting in a table. However, it turns out that default the List.js sorting is limited to string based only. In this business application there are also columns with date values, so I needed to expand on the basic List.js capability. My approach consists of the following elements:

• In the ViewModel of the Modern App, also include a data property that contains the timestamp representation of date value
• In the View, also include an html element to render the timestamp value in the DOM. As you don't want to distract the user, this element must be invisible. An hidden 'input' would serve that purpose, where it not that List.js only retrieves values from block-elements. Alternative therefore is an hidden 'Div' element.
• In the View, change the List.js data-sort specification to this timestamp value. Also make sure to include in the valueNames specification for instantiating the List
• Almost there... Earlier I already extended List.js to parse the raw values from html elements. Reason for doing that is that default List.js retrieves the innerHTML. And in case your html element contains html-specification (e.g. for an hyperlink), this results in malfunctioning of List.js filtering/searching and sorting capabilities. I determine the raw values via 'innerText'. However, Chrome returns for hidden elements an innerText value of empty string... Therefore I made an additional minor addition to in such case determine the raw value via 'textContent'.

So far the written explanation. For developers it is much more understandable to explain via code:

The modifications to ViewModel (Knockout)

The modifications to View (Knockout)

The modifications to List.js library