Options via Ajax only
When the data for the table is loaded via Ajax (ajax), the searchList content type will check for an array of options for the column(s) that it has been applied to and only show for
columns where options are found. For this to work the JSON object must have a columnControl object which contains arrays of label /
value objects. The keys for the columnControl object tell ColumnControl which column the options should apply to. This is done based
on columns.data, columns.name or the column index.
In the JSON loaded for this example, there are columnControl.position and columnControl.office arrays. Note that they match the
columns.data name for the
Position and Office columns and therefore they have dropdown search lists. Note also that the other columns don't have search lists since
they don't specify options in the Ajax loaded data.
| 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: '../data/options.json',
columnControl: ['order', ['searchList']],
columns: [
{ data: 'name' },
{ data: 'position' },
{ data: 'office' },
{ data: 'extn' },
{ data: 'start_date' },
{ data: 'salary' }
],
ordering: {
indicators: false,
handler: false
}
});
new DataTable("#example", {
ajax: '../data/options.json',
columnControl: ['order', ['searchList']],
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.