I don't understand how to write a plugin for this library.

Moghul

I'm looking at the documentation here https://datatables.net/manual/plug-ins/features#new-initialisation and I can see how to initialize a plugin, and I can figure out by looking at the api how to retrieve the data which interests me, but I can not figure out how to change this data to match my needs.

I am trying to make a plugin which will modify both the header and the cells of a column - specifically by merging columns into each-other.
I have other plans for making plugins as well such as dropdowns in the header for filtering.

Can anyone provide me with just a little snippet of code modifying the header and the cells, just adding some random string to them?

PS: I know renderers exist for cells, but that's not quite enough for my purposes. I don't have anything against using them as part of the final solution, but it's insufficient for my purposes.

Moghul

Looks like you can change values of aoColumns and aoData and they'll stick.

allan

aoColumns and aoData

Bad idea . I consider the settings object to be internal to DataTables. It can, will and does change (albeit occasionally) between versions.

The API is the best way to interact with the table - e.g. cell().data() to get / set the data for a cell.

Regards,
Allan