This example demonstrates the use of the static display controller. By default Editor will use a lightbox (i.e. a modal) to display the form, but this can be changed with
display, and the build in static option can be used to instruct Editor to
display the form anywhere on the page (note that display is used if a string is given to display).
In this example, static is used to show
the editing form next to the host DataTable and editing a row is activated by simply clicking on it to select (you could readily use a link / icon in the table to trigger editing if you prefer).
In addition to editing existing rows, the form has an extra button through the buttons option in form-options to allow a row to be deleted, and a
new row can be added though an event listener that calls create().
| Name | Salary |
|---|---|
| Name | Salary |
Select a row
to edit or delete
The JavaScript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
const editor = new DataTable.Editor({
ajax: '/api/staff',
table: '#myTable',
display: '#myForm',
fields: [
{
label: 'First name:',
name: 'first_name'
},
{
label: 'Last name:',
name: 'last_name'
},
{
label: 'Position:',
name: 'position'
},
{
label: 'Salary:',
name: 'salary'
}
]
});
const table = new DataTable('#myTable', {
ajax: '/api/staff',
columns: [
{
data: null,
render: function (data, type, row) {
// Combine the first and last names into a single table field
return data.first_name + ' ' + data.last_name;
}
},
{ data: 'salary' }
],
select: true,
pagingType: 'simple',
lengthChange: false
});
// When a row is selected, trigger editing on it.
table
.on('select', function () {
let indexes = table.rows({ selected: true }).indexes();
// Activate editing, giving a button that can be used to delete the
// target row(s)
editor.edit(indexes, {
title: 'Edit row',
buttons: [
'Save changes',
{
label: 'Delete',
fn: () => editor.remove(indexes, false).submit()
}
]
});
})
.on('deselect', function () {
editor.close();
});
// Event handler to trigger the addition of a new row
document.querySelector('p.add-new a').addEventListener('click', function (e) {
e.preventDefault();
editor.create({
title: 'Create new row',
buttons: [
'Save',
{
label: 'Cancel',
fn: () => editor.close()
}
]
});
});
In addition to the above code, the following JavaScript library files are loaded for use in this example:
The HTML shown below is the raw HTML table element, before it has been enhanced by DataTables:
This example uses a little bit of additional CSS beyond what is loaded from the library files (below), in order to correctly display the table. The additional CSS used is shown below:
div.split-columns {
display: flex;
align-items: flex-start;
gap: 1em;
}
div.split-columns > div {
width: 50%;
}
#myForm {
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
}
#myForm > div.not-editing {
text-align: center;
}
#myForm div.DTE {
width: 100%;
}
#myForm div.DTE div.DTE_Header,
#myForm div.DTE div.DTE_Footer {
background: transparent !important;
border: none !important;
}
The following CSS library files are loaded for use in this example to provide the styling of the table:
This table loads data by Ajax. The latest data that has been loaded is shown below. This data will update automatically as any additional data is loaded.
The script used to perform the server-side processing for this table is shown below. Please note that this is just an example script using PHP. Server-side processing scripts can be written in any language, using the protocol described in the DataTables documentation.