POST variables not being passed to server side

Apolymoxic

I am having a hard time getting the serverside functionality to work correctly. I have been searching and trying to get this to work for about 2 days now... I have tried EVERYTHING I have found.

When I set the type to "POST", I don't get any variables passed over, and therefore, I cannot query SQL correct because I don't know start and length. When I remove POST or set it to GET, I get a funny object that I can parse and get the correct values, but I don't think it's supposed to be that way.

var contactTable = $('#contactList').DataTable({
                processing: true,
                serverSide: true,
                ordering: false,
                searching: {"regex": true},
                lengthMenu: [[10, 25, 50, 100, -1], [10, 25, 50, 100, "All"]],
                pageLength: 50,
                ajax: {
                    "type": "POST",
                    "url": "api/get-contacts.php",
                    // "dataSrc":"",
                    "dataType": "json",
                    "contentType": 'application/json; charset=utf-8'
                },
                stateSave: true,
                columns: [
                    { "data": "check"},
                    { "data": "id" },
                    { "data": "first_name" },
                    { "data": "last_name" }
                ],
                columnDefs: [
                    {
                        "className": 'select-checkbox',
                        "targets": 0
                    },
                    {
                        "visible": false, "targets": [1, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13]
                    }
                ],
                select: {
                    style: 'os',
                    selector: 'td:first-child'
                },
                order: [[1, 'asc']]
            });

I have tried to place this in data, but it doesn't seem to help...

"data": function (data) {
                        // Grab form values containing user options
                        var form = {};
                        $.each($("form").serializeArray(), function (i, field) {
                            form[field.name] = field.value || "";
                        });

                        // Add options used by Datatables
                        var info = (contactTable == null) ? { "start": 0, "length": 50 } : contactTable.page.info();
                        $.extend(form, info);
                        return JSON.stringify(form);
                    },

All I want is to be able to access the variables on the serverside so I can make the correct SQL queries.

Can someone please help?

kthorngren

Not sure what you are using for your server script. Whatever it is PHP, Python, etc you will need to setup the script to accept POST requests then parse the parameters.

Here is a PHP server side processing example with POST. Take a look at the Server-side script tab.
https://datatables.net/examples/server_side/post.html

Kevin

Apolymoxic

I apologize... I knew I was forgetting something.

This is the top of my PHP page for serverside

require __DIR__ . '/../appCode/functions.php';


var_dump($_REQUEST);

$startIndex = $_POST['start']; //Start Index
$length = $_POST['length']; //Limit of Records to fetch
$searchString = $_POST['search']['value']; // String value to search in database
$orderByColumn = $_POST['order'][0]['column']; //Order of the Column
$orderByDirection = $_POST['order'][0]['dir']; //Direction of the Column Asc or Desc

I get errors on this page saying that 'start', 'length', etc... are all undefined. When I dump $_REQUEST and $_POST, there is nothing.

That example doesn't help me much because it doesn't show how to access the variables in the PHP page. I feel like this is something simple that I am just over looking...

Apolymoxic

Maybe it's the ssp.class.php? I don't have that... Will that help access the variables?

I found it here https://github.com/DataTables/DataTables/blob/master/examples/server_side/scripts/ssp.class.php but I fail to see how that will help me. I just need access to the variables, not my DB. I have my queries already created.

Apolymoxic

So, I ended up stripping the whole thing down and now it works. I am not sure what I was doing.

datatables.php

ajax: {
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "api/get-contacts.php"
                },

serverside.php

require __DIR__ . '/../appCode/functions.php';

$startIndex = $_REQUEST['start']; //Start Index
$length = $_REQUEST['length']; //Limit of Records to fetch
$searchString = $_REQUEST['search']['value']; // String value to search in database
$orderByColumn = $_REQUEST['order'][0]['column']; //Order of the Column
$orderByDirection = $_REQUEST['order'][0]['dir']; //Direction of the Column Asc or Desc

Thank you for your help.