Cannot read property 'mData' of undefined Error when initialising DataTables

daveg

I am brand new to DataTables but I seem to be falling at the first hurdle.

I have a table in my HTML page that I wish to populate with some values using a function which generates a table for me in HTML DOM. By default the table is empty on the HTML page:

     <table id="tblResults">
     </table>

I run the function that gets the data that I want. I know the data is there as if I call:

var updatedresults = document.getElementById("tblResults").outerHTML;
console.log(updatedresults);

I have checked the data output and this all looks fine.
However when I then call:

$('#tblResults').DataTable();

I get the following error:

jquery.dataTables.min.js:90 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'mData' of undefined

Please Help!!

Many Thanks

Dave