Scrolling and Bootstrap tabs

This example shows how DataTables with scrolling can be used together with Bootstrap tabs (or indeed any other method whereby the table is in a hidden, display:none, element when it is initialised).

The reason this requires special consideration is that when the DataTable is initialised in a hidden element the browser doesn't have any measurements with which to give the DataTable, and this will result in the misalignment of columns when scrolling is enabled.

This misalignment can be corrected by the columns.adjust() method when the table is made visible (i.e. it has dimensions).

This example shows how the Bootstrap shown.bs.tab event can be used to trigger this method call. The visible tables on the page are selected using the static $.fn.dataTable.tables() method and running the columns.adjust() method on them.

Name	Position	Office	Extn.	Start date	Salary

Name	Position	Office	Extn.	Start date	Salary

Javascript
HTML
CSS
Ajax
Server-side script
Comments

The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:

$('button[data-bs-toggle="tab"]').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
	DataTable.tables({ visible: true, api: true }).columns.adjust();
});

$('table.table').DataTable({
	ajax: '../ajax/data/arrays.txt',
	paging: false,
	scrollCollapse: true,
	scrollY: 200
});

// Apply a search to the second table for the demo
$('#myTable2').DataTable().search('New York').draw();

// Listen for Bootstrap tab change
document.querySelectorAll('button[data-bs-toggle="tab"]').forEach((el) => {
	el.addEventListener('shown.bs.tab', () => {
		DataTable.tables({ visible: true, api: true }).columns.adjust();
	});
});

new DataTable('table.table', {
	ajax: '../ajax/data/arrays.txt',
	paging: false,
	scrollCollapse: true,
	scrollY: 200
});

// Apply a search to the second table for the demo
new DataTable.Api('#myTable2').search('New York').draw();

In addition to the above code, the following Javascript library files are loaded for use in this example:

The HTML shown below is the raw HTML table element, before it has been enhanced by DataTables:

This example uses a little bit of additional CSS beyond what is loaded from the library files (below), in order to correctly display the table. The additional CSS used is shown below:

The following CSS library files are loaded for use in this example to provide the styling of the table:

This table loads data by Ajax. The latest data that has been loaded is shown below. This data will update automatically as any additional data is loaded.

The script used to perform the server-side processing for this table is shown below. Please note that this is just an example script using PHP. Server-side processing scripts can be written in any language, using the protocol described in the DataTables documentation.

Scrolling and Bootstrap tabs

Other examples

Basic initialisation

Advanced initialisation

Data sources

Language and Internationalisation

DateTime

Plug-ins

Styling

Layout

API

Ajax

Server-side

DataTables