Datatables
DataTables is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library. It is a highly flexible tool, build upon the foundations of progressive enhancement, that adds all of these advanced features to any HTML table.
Zero configuration
DataTables has most features enabled by default, so all you need to do to use it with your own ables is to call the construction function: $().DataTable();.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Feature enable / disable
Disabling features that you don't wish to use for a particular table is easily done by setting a variable in the initialisation object. The full list of available options is available in the DataTables reference.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Default ordering (sorting)
With DataTables you can alter the ordering characteristics of the table at initialisation time. Using the order initialisation parameter, you can set the table to display the data in exactly the order that you want.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Multi-column ordering
DataTables allows ordering by multiple columns at the same time, which can be activated in a number of different ways
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Hidden columns
DataTables allows ordering by multiple columns at the same time, which can be activated in a number of
There are times when you might find it useful to display only a sub-set of the information that was available in the original table. For example you might want to reduce the amount of data shown on screen to make it clearer
for the user (consider also using the Responsive
extension for this). This is done through the columns.visible
column option.
Complex headers (rowspan and colspan)
When using tables to display data, you will often wish to display column information in groups. DataTables fully supports colspan
and
rowspan
in the table's header, assigning the required order listeners to the TH element suitable for that column.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
DOM positioning
When customising DataTables for your own usage, you might find that the default position of the feature elements (filter input etc) is not quite to your liking. To address this issue DataTables takes inspiration from the CSS
3 Advanced Layout Module and provides the
dom
initialisation parameter which can be set to indicate where you wish particular features to appear
in the DOM. You can also specify div
wrapping containers (with an id and / or class) to provide complete layout flexibility.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Alternative pagination
The default page control presented by DataTables (forward and backward buttons with up to 7 page numbers in-between) is fine for most situations, but there are cases where you may wish to customise the options presented to
the end user. This is done through DataTables' extensible pagination mechanism, the pagingType
option.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Scroll - vertical
This example shows the DataTables table body scrolling in the vertical direction. This can generally be seen as an alternative method to pagination for displaying a large table in a fairly small vertical area, and as such pagination has been disabled here (note that this is not mandatory, it will work just fine with pagination enabled as well!).
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Scroll - vertical, dynamic height
This example shows a vertically scrolling DataTable that makes use of the CSS3 vh
unit in order to dynamically resize the viewport based on the browser window height. The vh
unit is effectively a percentage of the browser window height. So the 50vh
used in this example is 50% of the window height. The viewport size will update dynamically as the window is resized.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Scroll - horizontal
DataTables has the ability to show tables with horizontal scrolling, which is very useful for when you have a wide table, but want to constrain it to a limited horizontal display area. To enable x-scrolling simply set the
scrollX
parameter to be whatever you want the container wrapper's width to be (this should be
100% in almost all cases with the width being constrained by the container element).
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Scroll - horizontal and vertical
In this example you can see DataTables doing both horizontal and vertical scrolling at the same time. Note also that pagination is enabled in this example, and the scrolling accounts for this.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Language - Comma decimal place
A dot (.
) is used to mark the decimal place in Javascript, however, many
parts of the world
use a comma (,
) and other characters such as the Unicode decimal separator (⎖
) or a dash (-
) are often used to show the decimal place in a displayed number.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Language options
Changing the language information displayed by DataTables is as simple as passing in a language object to the DataTable constructor. This example shows a different set of English string being used, rather than the defaults.
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011/04/25 | $320,800 |
Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011/07/25 | $170,750 |
Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433060 |
Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012/08/06 | $137,500 |
Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010/10/14 | $327,900 |
Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009/09/15 | $205,500 |
Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008/12/13 | $103,600 |
Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008/12/19 | $90,560 |
Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013/03/03 | $342,000 |
Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |