Dropdown: Search only
Some table designs may not want the search input always visible, as per the previous examples in this section. Instead, a
common pattern is to place the search input into a dropdown, which is readily done with the searchDropdown content type, as shown in
this example.
searchDropdown is simply a
wrapper around dropdown with the icon
set to be a magnifying glass. If you wish to mix search in the dropdown with other content, see the next example.
| 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:
$('#example').DataTable({
ajax: '../../../../examples/ajax/data/objects.txt',
columnControl: ['order', 'searchDropdown'],
columns: [
{ data: 'name' },
{ data: 'position' },
{ data: 'office' },
{ data: 'extn' },
{ data: 'start_date' },
{ data: 'salary' }
],
ordering: {
indicators: false,
handler: false
}
});
new DataTable('#example', {
ajax: '../../../../examples/ajax/data/objects.txt',
columnControl: ['order', 'searchDropdown'],
columns: [
{ data: 'name' },
{ data: 'position' },
{ data: 'office' },
{ data: 'extn' },
{ data: 'start_date' },
{ data: 'salary' }
],
ordering: {
indicators: false,
handler: false
}
});
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.