Angular TreeList Sorting Basics

Updated on Jun 19, 2026

The sorting functionality enables you to arrange the data by single or multiple fields in ascending or descending order.

Enable the sorting feature by using two methods:

• Automatic Data Processing—Implement sorting (or other data operations) with less code.
• Manual Sorting—Provides more control when implementing the sorting feature.

Automatic Data Processing

When you use the built-in binding directives for flat and hierarchical data, the TreeList performs the sorting automatically for you.

Further details on how the data binding directives work under the hood are available in the data operations with the built-in directives documentation section.

To enable sorting:

1. Provide the collection to the built-in kendoTreeListFlatBinding or kendoTreeListHierarchyBinding directive depending on your data type.
2. Set the sortable property to true.
3. (Optional) Set the sort property to a collection of SortDescriptor objects. This allows you to sort the data by specific criteria during the initialization of the TreeList.

html

<kendo-treelist
    [kendoTreeListFlatBinding]="data"
    idField="id"
    parentIdField="parentId"
    [sortable]="true">
    <kendo-treelist-column field="name"></kendo-treelist-column>
</kendo-treelist>

The following example demonstrates the TreeList sorting functionality when the kendoTreeListFlatBinding directive is applied.

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Suggested Links

• Manual Sorting
• Multi-Column Sorting
• Custom Sorting
• API Reference of the TreeListComponent
• API Index of the TreeList