jquery tablesorter and tablesorter Filter plugin...can it sort and filter unordered lists somehow?

I'm using the tablesorter and the tablesorterFilter plugin, and for that matter the tablesorterPager plugin to sort my data. I have a navigation menu that I use to organize content into a folder type layout, similar to how windows explorer folder tree view works. I'm using an unordered list to display the menu.

Is it possible, or is there a plugin out there that will make the following possible. I want to use the filter to find folders down in the folder tree (nested folders) and then display that row along with its parent folders expanded (the menu is an expandable navigation plus/minus menu). Additionally I would also like to use the tablesort to sort only the ROOT Folder links of the nav menu.

Here's what the html table code and unordered list looks like:

<table>
  <thead>........</thead>
  <tbody>
        <tr>
              <td>
                    <ul>
                          <li>ROOT Folder 1
                                <ul>
                                      <li>Subfolder A
                                            <ul>
                                                  <li>Subfolder A.1</li>
                                           </ul>
                                      </li>
                                </ul>
                          </li>
                          <li>ROOT Folder 2
                                <ul>
                                      <li>Subfolder 2A
                                            <ul>
                                                  <li>Subfolder 2A.1</li>
                                           </ul>
                                      </li>
                                </ul>
                          </li>
                    </ul>
              </开发者_如何学Pythontd>
        </tr>
  </tbody>

Thanks for your help.

Have you looked at http://datatables.net/index