Preamble

When using DataTables with server-side processing the default behaviour is to have DataTables automatically go the server and load the data, removing anything which might already be on the page. However, this behaviour might not always be desirable when the first page of the table has already been preloaded in the HTML. This is achieved by using the iDeferLoading initialisation property. It serves two purposes, firstly to include that deferred loading is required, but also to tell DataTables how many records there are in the full table, in this case 57 (this allows the information element and pagination to be displayed correctly).

In this example the preloaded data is hardcoded in, but you could use a PHP include or anything else to put the data in the table for the first page - DataTables won't process it at all, simply display it and be ready to load the next page / search / sort etc.

Live example

Rendering engine	Browser	Platform(s)	Engine version	CSS grade
Gecko	Firefox 1.0	Win 98+ / OSX.2+	1.7	A
Gecko	Firefox 1.5	Win 98+ / OSX.2+	1.8	A
Gecko	Firefox 2.0	Win 98+ / OSX.2+	1.8	A
Gecko	Firefox 3.0	Win 2k+ / OSX.3+	1.9	A
Gecko	Camino 1.0	OSX.2+	1.8	A
Gecko	Camino 1.5	OSX.3+	1.8	A
Gecko	Netscape 7.2	Win 95+ / Mac OS 8.6-9.2	1.7	A
Gecko	Netscape Browser 8	Win 98SE+	1.7	A
Gecko	Netscape Navigator 9	Win 98+ / OSX.2+	1.8	A
Gecko	Mozilla 1.0	Win 95+ / OSX.1+	1	A
Rendering engine	Browser	Platform(s)	Engine version	CSS grade

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#example').dataTable( {
		"bProcessing": true,
		"bServerSide": true,
		"sAjaxSource": "scripts/server_processing.php",
		"iDeferLoading": 57
	} );
} );

Other examples