DataTables

Hi Brian,

It depends how you are using DataTables - if you have everything done on the client-side (i.e. all information read from HTML) then it's going to be borderline shocking (you might just get away with 50'000, but not much more). If however you are using server-side processing, then it's not going to be an issue, even millions of rows will be fine then because all of the data processing will be done by a database engine designed for that kind of thing. So if you are planning for lots of rows, I'd encourage the use of server-side processing. You can even do things such as pipelining to reduce the number of Ajax calls.

http://datatables.net/1.5-beta/examples/data_sources/server_side.html
http://datatables.net/1.5-beta/examples/server_side/pipeline.html

Allan

OK cool all done... works a treat!

Only one comment, in your code ( http://datatables.net/1.5-beta/examples/server_side/pipeline.html ) you have:

$('#exampvar oCache = {
iCacheLower: -1
};

but needed to change it to (as you have in page source):

var oCache = {
iCacheLower: -1
};

Hi Brian,

Thanks for spotting the typo in the example - fixed now.

I'm not sure I quite understand your last comment though - what lot do you need to set where?

Allan

Oh I see! Does this really work?! A little bit surprised because don't you now have two Ajax requests for each table draw - the $.ajax() POST one you've got assigned to fnServerData and the one inside fnServerData...

I would have thought it would have been easier to just modify the fnDataTablesPipeline() function to use POST rather than GET?

Allan

If you look at your XHRs in Firebug, does it fire off two Ajax calls on the first get?

I'd recommend basically just using the same as in the example: http://datatables.net/1.5-beta/examples/server_side/pipeline.html but changing the line "$.getJSON( sSource, aoData, function (json) {" in fnDataTablesPipeline() to be your $.ajax() call with POST. Just wrap the return up in an anonymous function (a bit like the POST example).

Allan

If it ain't broken... :-)

hehe - see that IE...

Okay so what I would suggest is basically implementing the same as I've got in my pipelining example, but change the $.getJSON(...) call to be $.ajax(...) and give it a POST. That should then work in IE (well... saying that without knowing the original problem in IE but also knowing IE is like falling on one's own sword...).

Allan

OK so make it...

$.ajax( sSource, aoData, function (json) {
/* Callback processing */
oCache.lastJson = jQuery.extend(true, {}, json);

if ( oCache.iCacheLower != oCache.iDisplayStart ) {
json.aaData.splice( 0, oCache.iDisplayStart-oCache.iCacheLower );
}
json.aaData.splice( oCache.iDisplayLength, json.aaData.length );

fnCallback(json)
} );

not sure what you mean there by give it a post...

Ah yes the old trailing comma... It's not actually valid JSON to have that, so I would argue that the IE behaviour is actually correct here (not often I would say that). jsonlint.com is a superb site for seeing if you json is valid or not and can help catch this kind of error.

What I was meaning with the $.ajax change was to use something like this:

$.ajax( {
"dataType": 'json',
"type": "POST",
"url": sSource,
"data": aoData,
"success": fnCallback
} );

rather than the getJSON helper function (note you'll probably need to modify that - I've just coped it form my POST example).

Allan