ellipsis

Restrict output data to a particular length, showing anything longer with ellipsis and a browser provided tooltip on hover.

• Author: Allan Jardine
• Requires: DataTables 1.10+

This data rendering helper method can be useful for cases where you have potentially large data strings to be shown in a column that is restricted by width. The data for the column is still fully searchable and sortable, but if it is longer than a give number of characters, it will be truncated and shown with ellipsis. A browser provided tooltip will show the full string to the end user on mouse hover of the cell.

This function should be used with the columns.render configuration option of DataTables.

It accepts three parameters:

1. integer - The number of characters to restrict the displayed data to.
2. boolean (optional - default false) - Indicate if the truncation of the string should not occur in the middle of a word (true) or if it can (false). This can allow the display of strings to look nicer, at the expense of showing less characters.
3. boolean (optional - default false) - Escape HTML entities (true) or not (false - default).

Use

This plug-in can be obtained and used in multiple different ways.

Browser

This plug-in is available on the DataTables CDN:

The plug-in will then automatically register itself against a global DataTables instance. This file can also be used if you are using an AMD loader such as Require.js.

Note that if you are using multiple plug-ins, it can be beneficial in terms of performance to combine the plug-ins into a single file and host it on your own server, rather than making multiple requests to the DataTables CDN.

NPM

The plug-ins are all available on NPM (which can also be used with Yarn or any other Javascript package manager) as part of the datatables.net-plugins package. To use this plug-in, first install the plug-ins package:

npm install datatables.net-plugins

ES modules

Then, if you are using ES modules, import datatables.net, any other DataTables extensions you need, and the plug-in:

import DataTable from 'datatables.net';
import 'datatables.net-plugins/dataRender/ellipsis.mjs';

CommonJS

If you are using a CommonJS loader for Node (e.g. with older versions of Webpack, or non-module Node code) use the following method to require the plug-in:

var $ = require('jquery');
var DataTable = require('datatables.net');
require('datatables.net-plugins/dataRender/ellipsis.js');

Examples

// Restrict a column to 17 characters, don't split words
  $('#example').DataTable( {
    columnDefs: [ {
      targets: 1,
      render: DataTable.render.ellipsis( 17, true )
    } ]
  } );

// Restrict a column to 10 characters, do split words
  $('#example').DataTable( {
    columnDefs: [ {
      targets: 2,
      render: DataTable.render.ellipsis( 10 )
    } ]
  } );

Version control

If you have any ideas for how this plug-in can be improved, or spot anything that is in error, it is available on GitHub and pull requests are very welcome!

• This plug-in: ellipsis.js
• Full DataTables plug-ins repository: DataTables/Plugins