Column visibility / export options - General structure setup in multi-language environment

totosalik

Hello community,

I'm still a beginner and I use datatables in an asp.net project in various views.

Since my data contains some columns that are language based I have created below functions to set the visibility based on the current language, which is retrieved from a cookie.

In total I have three different datatables regarding column quantity.

I moved these functions to my site.js file to call them from the view (see below).

function setEnglishDT(dttable) {
    dttable.column(0).visible(true);
    dttable.column(1).visible(true);
    dttable.column(2).visible(false);
    dttable.column(3).visible(false);
    }
function setOtherDT(dttable) {
    dttable.column(0).visible(false);
    dttable.column(1).visible(false);
    dttable.column(2).visible(true);
    dttable.column(3).visible(true);
    }

In every view I manage the basic setup, like column width, filtering etc. and then set the column visibility as explained above.

 $(document).ready(function () {
...other stuff...
});

function LoadDataTable() {
    var dttable = $('#DataTable').DataTable({
        bFilter: true, bInfo: true,
        "bAutoWidth": false,
        dom: 'Bfrtip',
        "aoColumnDefs": [
            { "bSortable": true, "sWidth": "15%", "aTargets": [0] },  // Engl. A
            { "bSortable": true, "sWidth": "15%", "aTargets": [1] }, // Engl. B
            { "bSortable": true, "sWidth": "15%", "aTargets": [2] }, // Other A
            { "bSortable": true, "sWidth": "15%", "aTargets": [3] }, // Other B 
        ]
    });

    if ($.cookie("_culture")) {
        var lan = $.cookie("_culture", lan, { expires: 21 });
        if (lan === "en-US") { setEnglishDT(dttable); }
        else { setOtherDT(dttable); }
    } 
    else {setOtherDT(dttable); }
}

This setup worked fine until now. I want to integrate copy & print options using the buttons extension and noticed that the hidden columns are also shown in the print preview. This also explains why I was able to find a search string that wasn't visible nor to be found in the html.

For each language I would need to be able to use something like this in order to show the correct columns:

buttons: [
                {
                  extend: 'print',
                  exportOptions: {
                     columns: [ 0, 1 ]
                }

I was also playing around with the extend function to set defaults but I don't know where to put the logic so that it will ideally affect every datatable in all of my views.

                        $.extend(true, $.fn.dataTable.defaults, {
                            "searching": false,
                            "ordering": false
                        })

I believe I have to change the whole structure in order to get this to work.
Can you show me how?

Thank you.