detecting old dataTable() object vs. new DataTable() object

carteriii

I'm upgrading an older site from 1.9.x to 1.10.x and have several tables to migrate. I intend to migrate the tables one at a time so I'd like to abstract some of my code to work with both versions. So for example, assume I have both versions initialized such as:

var oldStyle = $('#old').dataTable();
var newStyle = $('#new').DataTable();

Now assume I want to call the same function passing either table...

genericFunction(oldStyle);
genericFunction(newStyle);

And now I move onto totally fictitious pseudo-code which demonstrates what I'd like to do. I'd like to be able to test "myTable" to know if it is an old object or a new API object. Note here that I'm using "typeof", which does not work, but I'm just trying to show the concept of what I'd like to do.

function genericFunction(myTable)
{
  if (typeof(myTable) == "old dataTable jquery object") {
    .... <use old functions>...
  } elseif (typeof(myTable) == "new DataTable API object") {
    .... <use new APIs>
   }
}

Clearly I can't just use typeof() and get what I want since both are "objects". I have debated about trying to call one style and simply using an exception to catch the error, but it seems like there is probably a cleaner way, more along the lines of typeof().

allan

You could use instanceof rather than typeof for this:

if ( myTable instanceof $.fn.dataTable.Api ) {
  ... new API method
}
else {
  ... old API
}

Going one step further you could detect jQuery style objects (the old API) and convert them to the new if you wanted:

var api = myTable;

if ( ! ( myTable instanceof $.fn.dataTable.Api ) ) {
  api = myTable.api();
}

... use new API method

Regards,
Allan

carteriii

Allan, you are the best. Thank you. I didn't realize I could just call myTable.api() to get the API object itself from the old table. That's perfect.