Plug-in development
As flexible as DataTables is, there may be times when you wish to customise certain aspects to your specific needs. DataTables has a number of plug-in and extension options which are detailed in this section.
If you do take the time to create a plug-in for DataTables and wish to share it with others, please get in touch.
API plug-in development
The DataTable's API provides a large number of methods that can be used to manipulate the table and gather data from it. Many of the methods that you will need are built-in, but you might also find it useful to be able to create a plug-in API method to extend the built-in functionality. This page discusses how to create a plug-in API method for DataTables. Read more »
Feature plug-in development
DataTables places a number of control and information elements around a table. We term these components "features". DataTables has a number of features build in which are registered via an API that is publicly available to register additional features as plug-ins. This page discusses how to use the feature API. Read more »
Ordering plug-in development
DataTables has built in support to correctly order the most common data types that are displayed in a table, but there will still be times when you find you have data that is not orders as you might expect. One option is to use orthogonal data so data that DataTables understands is used for ordering (for example a date might be given as an integer timestamp rather than a formatted string). Another option is to use an ordering plug-in, as discussed on this page. Read more »
Type detection plug-in development
Ordering plug-ins can be very useful for ordering arbitrary data types, however to be truly useful they need a companion type detection plug-in that will automatically scan a column's data and determine if the ordering plug-in can order the data in the column. Ordering plug-ins can be used without a type detection plug-in through the columns.type option, but their utility is greatly increased if this just happens for you automatically! Read more »