The filtering functionality that is provided by DataTables is very useful for quickly search through the information in the table - however the search is global, and you (or the end user) may wish to filter only on a particular column of data. To met this need the DataTables fnFilter() API function allow you to specify a column to limit to search to. Note that this works in-combination with the global search filter!
+The filtering functionality that is provided by DataTables is very useful for quickly search through the information in the table - however the search is global, and you (or the end user) may wish to filter only on a particular column of data. To met this need the DataTables fnFilter() API function allow you to specify a column to limit to search to. Note that this works in-combination with the global search filter. Further note that because the input elements are outside of the control of DataTables, with state saving enabled, stored values are not automatically restored - please see this post in the forum for how to do this.
The example below shows a table which has a text input box for each column in the footer element of the table. This allows the data in each column to be quickly filtered upon by the end user.