jQuery dataTables sorting on custom date range column

You must implement your own sorting plugin to do that. It is quite simple :

jQuery.extend( jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort, {
    "date-range-pre": function ( a ) {
        a = a.split('-')[0].trim();
        return Date.parse(a);   
    },
     "date-range-asc": function ( a, b ) {
        return ((a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0));
    },
     "date-range-desc": function ( a, b ) {
        return ((a < b) ? 1 : ((a > b) ? -1 : 0));
    }
} );

The above simply extracts the first date by splitting the string and then do the sorting on that. There is no error handling, i.e care taking of empty strings and so on - you can do that yourself. Usage :

var table = $('#example').DataTable({
    columnDefs: [
       { type: 'date-range', targets: 0 }
    ]
}) 

demo -> http://jsfiddle.net/gs5syg70/