The foundation for DataTables is progressive enhancement, so it is very adept at reading table information directly from the DOM. This example shows how easy it is to add searching, ordering and paging to your HTML
table by simply running DataTables on it.
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
$433,060
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
Charde Marshall
Regional Director
San Francisco
36
2008/10/16
$470,600
Haley Kennedy
Senior Marketing Designer
London
43
2012/12/18
$313,500
Tatyana Fitzpatrick
Regional Director
London
19
2010/03/17
$385,750
Michael Silva
Marketing Designer
London
66
2012/11/27
$198,500
Paul Byrd
Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
New York
64
2010/06/09
$725,000
Gloria Little
Systems Administrator
New York
59
2009/04/10
$237,500
Bradley Greer
Software Engineer
London
41
2012/10/13
$132,000
Dai Rios
Personnel Lead
Edinburgh
35
2012/09/26
$217,500
Jenette Caldwell
Development Lead
New York
30
2011/09/03
$345,000
Yuri Berry
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
New York
40
2009/06/25
$675,000
Caesar Vance
Pre-Sales Support
New York
21
2011/12/12
$106,450
Doris Wilder
Sales Assistant
Sidney
23
2010/09/20
$85,600
Angelica Ramos
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
London
47
2009/10/09
$1,200,000
Gavin Joyce
Developer
Edinburgh
42
2010/12/22
$92,575
Jennifer Chang
Regional Director
Singapore
28
2010/11/14
$357,650
Brenden Wagner
Software Engineer
San Francisco
28
2011/06/07
$206,850
Fiona Green
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
San Francisco
48
2010/03/11
$850,000
Shou Itou
Regional Marketing
Tokyo
20
2011/08/14
$163,000
Michelle House
Integration Specialist
Sidney
37
2011/06/02
$95,400
Suki Burks
Developer
London
53
2009/10/22
$114,500
Prescott Bartlett
Technical Author
London
27
2011/05/07
$145,000
Gavin Cortez
Team Leader
San Francisco
22
2008/10/26
$235,500
Martena Mccray
Post-Sales support
Edinburgh
46
2011/03/09
$324,050
Unity Butler
Marketing Designer
San Francisco
47
2009/12/09
$85,675
Howard Hatfield
Office Manager
San Francisco
51
2008/12/16
$164,500
Hope Fuentes
Secretary
San Francisco
41
2010/02/12
$109,850
Vivian Harrell
Financial Controller
San Francisco
62
2009/02/14
$452,500
Timothy Mooney
Office Manager
London
37
2008/12/11
$136,200
Jackson Bradshaw
Director
New York
65
2008/09/26
$645,750
Olivia Liang
Support Engineer
Singapore
64
2011/02/03
$234,500
Bruno Nash
Software Engineer
London
38
2011/05/03
$163,500
Sakura Yamamoto
Support Engineer
Tokyo
37
2009/08/19
$139,575
Thor Walton
Developer
New York
61
2013/08/11
$98,540
Finn Camacho
Support Engineer
San Francisco
47
2009/07/07
$87,500
Serge Baldwin
Data Coordinator
Singapore
64
2012/04/09
$138,575
Zenaida Frank
Software Engineer
New York
63
2010/01/04
$125,250
Zorita Serrano
Software Engineer
San Francisco
56
2012/06/01
$115,000
Jennifer Acosta
Junior Javascript Developer
Edinburgh
43
2013/02/01
$75,650
Cara Stevens
Sales Assistant
New York
46
2011/12/06
$145,600
Hermione Butler
Regional Director
London
47
2011/03/21
$356,250
Lael Greer
Systems Administrator
London
21
2009/02/27
$103,500
Jonas Alexander
Developer
San Francisco
30
2010/07/14
$86,500
Shad Decker
Regional Director
Edinburgh
51
2008/11/13
$183,000
Michael Bruce
Javascript Developer
Singapore
29
2011/06/27
$183,000
Donna Snider
Customer Support
New York
27
2011/01/25
$112,000
Name
Position
Office
Age
Start date
Salary
Ajax sourced data
DataTables has the ability to read data from virtually any JSON data source that can be obtained by Ajax. This can be done, in its most simple form, by setting the ajax:option option to the address of
the JSON data source.
Name
Position
Office
Extn.
Start date
Salary
Name
Position
Office
Extn.
Start date
Salary
Javascript sourced data
At times you will wish to be able to create a table from dynamic information passed directly to DataTables, rather than having it read from the document. This is achieved using the
data option in the initialisation object, passing in an array of data to be used (like all other DataTables handled data, this can be arrays or
objects using thecolumns.data option).
A table must be available on the page for DataTables to use. This examples shows an empty table element being initialising as a
DataTable with a set of data from a Javascript array. The columns in the table are dynamically created based on the columns.title configuration
option.
Server-side processing
There are many ways to get your data into DataTables, and if you are working with seriously large databases, you might want to consider using the server-side options that DataTables provides. With server-side
processing enabled, all paging, searching, ordering actions that DataTables performs are handed off to a server where an SQL engine (or similar) can perform these actions on the large data set (after all, that's what
the database engine is designed for!). As such, each draw of the table will result in a new Ajax request being made to get the required data.
Server-side processing is enabled by setting the serverSide:option option to true and providing an Ajax data source through the
ajax:option option.