Answers

• allan Posts: 63,161Questions: 1Answers: 10,406 Site admin

  April 2016 Answer ✓

  Hi,

  Currently this isn't possible with Buttons, but it is something that I've got on my to do list. I likely won't make it in for 1.2.0 (although I will take a look to see what is involved), but it is something I plan to introduce.

  I agree that at the moment it is a bit counter intuitive.

  Allan
• theAnimalix Posts: 35Questions: 12Answers: 2

  April 2016 edited April 2016

  Hey Alan,

  Great to hear it's on your to do list, I hope we can see it soon. Else this is one of the rare things I didn't like about DataTables, all other features work and play together perfectly for server-side processing (was able to customize most of the thing I imagined). Maybe another small minus for indexed column instead of named ones, hope that can also get addressed at some point in the future. :)

  Thanks again for great plugin Alan and keep up the good work.
• allan Posts: 63,161Questions: 1Answers: 10,406 Site admin

  April 2016

  Maybe another small minus for indexed column instead of named ones

  You can name columns using columns.name and then use that in the column-selector.

  Allan
• theAnimalix Posts: 35Questions: 12Answers: 2

  April 2016 edited April 2016

  Sorry if I got that wrong. I am using names but I still think I need to use indexes for:

  -ordering:

  order: [ [ 41,  'desc' ] ],
  

  -for displaying only specific columns to specific users (based on extra data from server):

  $(table.column(index).header()).removeClass('never').addClass(value);
  

  and custom filters (where I store column index as HTML data attribute):

  table.column(columnIdx).search(searchValue);
  

  Is it really possible to use names here instead?

  EDIT: after reading the documentation again it seems I can pass a name to column() as well, but I'm still not sure what exactly I should pass (string name doesn't seem to work).
  I'm also still not sure about ordering.
• allan Posts: 63,161Questions: 1Answers: 10,406 Site admin

  April 2016

  -ordering:

  Yes for this one - ordering is currently index based, although I do plan to add the option of optionally using names in future.

  For the other two, you can use the :name selector for column(). e.g.: table.column( 'myColumn:name' ).search( ... ).

  Allan
• theAnimalix Posts: 35Questions: 12Answers: 2

  April 2016

  Thanks you very much Alan for pointing that out. It works perfect. It turned out it didn't work on first try since I had some other code related preventing it to work.

  I think we can live with ordering being index based, it would be just cherry on the top.
• allan Posts: 63,161Questions: 1Answers: 10,406 Site admin

  April 2016

  You could potentially use the columns().index() method to get the index based on the name:

  table.order( [[
    table.column( 'myColumn:name' ).index(),
    'asc'
  ]] ).draw();
  

  When I implement it internally, that is more or less what it will be doing.

  Allan
• theAnimalix Posts: 35Questions: 12Answers: 2

  April 2016 edited April 2016

  Great idea Allan, haven't thought about that.

  However, your solution loads the data from the server twice, so I've instead used it inside "preInit.dt" event which works perfect and looks like this (to sort "updated" column before the DT loads):

      $(document).on('preInit.dt', function (e, settings) {
          var api = new $.fn.dataTable.Api(settings);
  
          //DT Default ORDER
          api.order( [[
              api.column( 'updated:name' ).index(),
              'desc'
          ]] );
      });
  

  Thanks again for all your help!
• allan Posts: 63,161Questions: 1Answers: 10,406 Site admin

  April 2016

  Clever use of preInit - thanks for posting back with that.

  Allan