Preamble

When using server-side processing it may be considerably easier on the server-side to output the data in an order which is not exactly that shown by the table to the end user. For this reason you can 'name' each column and this information will be sent to the server (comma delimited) as the variable 'sColumns' - this is the column information that DataTables expects to get back from a request.

Equally there you can defined an 'sColumns' in the JSON return which tells DataTables the order of the columns that has been returned. If the order is different from what it expects, then it will automatically re-order for you. The following example shows a server-side return which gives the columns "out of order".

Live example

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#example').dataTable( {
		"bProcessing": true,
		"bServerSide": true,
		"sAjaxSource": "scripts/ordering.php",
		"aoColumns": [
			{ "sName": "engine" },
			{ "sName": "browser" },
			{ "sName": "platform" },
			{ "sName": "version" },
			{ "sName": "grade" }
		]
	} );
} );

Server response

The code below shows the latest JSON data that has been returned from the server in response to the Ajax request made by DataTables. This will update as further requests are made.

Other examples