Date sorting in DataTables does not work

Hello,

I'm using the DataTable component with Vanilla JavaScript and it's not sorting date values correctly if formatted as mm/dd/yyyy. It's seeing the numeric values as text, screenshot below.

I came across these resources:

https://mdbootstrap.com/support/vue/table-sorting-not-working-for-date-column/

https://mdbootstrap.com/support/react/sorting-datatables-by-date-and-time/

• I'm ensuring that data is coming back from the API as YYYY-MM-DD .
• I added a type: date
• I have a function that converts it to the desired format (rather than pass it this way from the server)

Code to populate the datatable:

const table = document.getElementById('myTable');
const columns = [
{ label: 'Prep Date', type: 'date', field: 'prepDate' }

];

const mdbTable = new mdb.Datatable( table, { columns, }, { loading: true });fetch( externalApiURL).then((response) => response.json()).then((data) => { mdbTable.update( { rows: data.map((entry) => ({ ...entry, prepDate: dateFormat( entry.prepDate ) ,

    })),
},
{ loading: false }
);

});

Function to format:

function dateFormat(myDate) {
// input: YYYY-MM-DD
// output: mm/dd/yyyy
var parts = myDate.split('-');
return parts[1] + '/' + parts[2] + '/' + parts[0];

}

Thank you!