How to select cells by class in export formatting

mtilton

I'm trying to format certain cells during export depending on if they have certain class, e.g., <td class="link">. This page https://datatables.net/extensions/buttons/examples/html5/outputFormat-function.html shows a good example of how to format export data based on column number. I can do this, and it works, but because columns may be rearranged it risks breaking in the future. Is there anything similar that can be done by class rather than column index?
Thanks for any help.
P.S., Allan, can you delete the post I sent about ten minutes ago? I was trying to ask this question, but it sent before I'd typed in more than a few words.

colin

You've got the column and row index passed into the body function, so you can use cell().node() to get the cell, and from there you can check for the classes. That column index would be consistent should it be moved.

Colin

p.s. I removed that other thread, so all done.

mtilton

Thanks for the fast reply. I didn't get to this today but will do so next week, and I'll mark this as the answer accordingly. Appreciate your help on both counts.

mtilton

In case anyone else is interested in this, the syntax is as follows:

($(myTable.cell(row, col).node()).hasClass('myClass'))

Just FYI, this may not work as planned if you are hiding some columns. One issue I ran into happened because myTable filters columns for export and excludes those with another class, "noExport":

exportOptions :
{
// export all visible columns except those of class noExport
columns: ':not(.noExport):visible',
rows: ':visible',

As a result, the "hasClass" selector above actually returns the index of a different column than the one that is set to "myClass." E.g., say column 13 has class "myClass" in the original table, but Column 13 is only Column 11 in the export of visible columns. Any attempt to modify data based on myClass will grab column 13 in the export and will modify the wrong data. I'm not sure if there's a way around this.

It's still good to know how to select data using cell(row, col).node(), though.

colin

If you could create a test case, we're happy to take a look. Information on how to create a test case (if you aren't able to link to the page you are working on) is available here.

Cheers,

Colin

kthorngren

Maybe you need to use column().index() and pass the string 'visible' to get the visible index.

Kevin