DataTables can use different data for different actions (display, ordering and searching) which can be immensely powerful for transforming data in the display to be intuitive for the end user, while using different, or more complex data, for other actions. For example, if a table contains a formatted telephone number in the format xxx-xxxx, intuitively a user might search for the number but without a dash. Using orthogonal data for searching allows both forms of the telephone number to be used, while only the nicely formatted number is displayed in the table.
One method in which DataTables can obtain this orthogonal data for its different actions is through custom HTML5 data attributes. DataTables will automatically detect four different attributes on the HTML elements:
data-sort or data-order - for ordering datadata-filter or data-search - for search dataThis example shows the use of data-sort and data-filter attributes. In this case the first column has been formatted so the first name has abbreviated, but the full name is still searchable (search for "Bruno" for example). Additionally, although the last column contains non-numeric data in it, the column will correctly order numerically as the data-sort / data-order attribute is set on the column with plain numeric data.
| Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
| T. Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | Mon 25th Apr 11 | $320,800/y |
| G. Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | Mon 25th Jul 11 | $170,750/y |
| A. Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | Mon 12th Jan 09 | $86,000/y |
| C. Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | Thu 29th Mar 12 | $433,060/y |
| A. Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | Fri 28th Nov 08 | $162,700/y |
| B. Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | Sun 2nd Dec 12 | $372,000/y |
| H. Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | Mon 6th Aug 12 | $137,500/y |
| R. Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | Thu 14th Oct 10 | $327,900/y |
| C. Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | Tue 15th Sep 09 | $205,500/y |
| S. Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | Sat 13th Dec 08 | $103,600/y |
| J. Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | Fri 19th Dec 08 | $90,560/y |
| Q. Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | Sun 3rd Mar 13 | $342,000/y |
| C. Marshall | Regional Director | San Francisco | 36 | Thu 16th Oct 08 | $470,600/y |
| H. Kennedy | Senior Marketing Designer | London | 43 | Tue 18th Dec 12 | $313,500/y |
| T. Fitzpatrick | Regional Director | London | 19 | Wed 17th Mar 10 | $385,750/y |
| M. Silva | Marketing Designer | London | 66 | Tue 27th Nov 12 | $198,500/y |
| P. Byrd | Chief Financial Officer (CFO) | New York | 64 | Wed 9th Jun 10 | $725,000/y |
| G. Little | Systems Administrator | New York | 59 | Fri 10th Apr 09 | $237,500/y |
| B. Greer | Software Engineer | London | 41 | Sat 13th Oct 12 | $132,000/y |
| D. Rios | Personnel Lead | Edinburgh | 35 | Wed 26th Sep 12 | $217,500/y |
| J. Caldwell | Development Lead | New York | 30 | Sat 3rd Sep 11 | $345,000/y |
| Y. Berry | Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) | New York | 40 | Thu 25th Jun 09 | $675,000/y |
| C. Vance | Pre-Sales Support | New York | 21 | Mon 12th Dec 11 | $106,450/y |
| D. Wilder | Sales Assistant | Sidney | 23 | Mon 20th Sep 10 | $85,600/y |
| A. Ramos | Chief Executive Officer (CEO) | London | 47 | Fri 9th Oct 09 | $1,200,000/y |
| G. Joyce | Developer | Edinburgh | 42 | Wed 22nd Dec 10 | $92,575/y |
| J. Chang | Regional Director | Singapore | 28 | Sun 14th Nov 10 | $357,650/y |
| B. Wagner | Software Engineer | San Francisco | 28 | Tue 7th Jun 11 | $206,850/y |
| F. Green | Chief Operating Officer (COO) | San Francisco | 48 | Thu 11th Mar 10 | $850,000/y |
| S. Itou | Regional Marketing | Tokyo | 20 | Sun 14th Aug 11 | $163,000/y |
| M. House | Integration Specialist | Sidney | 37 | Thu 2nd Jun 11 | $95,400/y |
| S. Burks | Developer | London | 53 | Thu 22nd Oct 09 | $114,500/y |
| P. Bartlett | Technical Author | London | 27 | Sat 7th May 11 | $145,000/y |
| G. Cortez | Team Leader | San Francisco | 22 | Sun 26th Oct 08 | $235,500/y |
| M. Mccray | Post-Sales support | Edinburgh | 46 | Wed 9th Mar 11 | $324,050/y |
| U. Butler | Marketing Designer | San Francisco | 47 | Wed 9th Dec 09 | $85,675/y |
| H. Hatfield | Office Manager | San Francisco | 51 | Tue 16th Dec 08 | $164,500/y |
| H. Fuentes | Secretary | San Francisco | 41 | Fri 12th Feb 10 | $109,850/y |
| V. Harrell | Financial Controller | San Francisco | 62 | Sat 14th Feb 09 | $452,500/y |
| T. Mooney | Office Manager | London | 37 | Thu 11th Dec 08 | $136,200/y |
| J. Bradshaw | Director | New York | 65 | Fri 26th Sep 08 | $645,750/y |
| O. Liang | Support Engineer | Singapore | 64 | Thu 3rd Feb 11 | $234,500/y |
| B. Nash | Software Engineer | London | 38 | Tue 3rd May 11 | $163,500/y |
| S. Yamamoto | Support Engineer | Tokyo | 37 | Wed 19th Aug 09 | $139,575/y |
| T. Walton | Developer | New York | 61 | Sun 11th Aug 13 | $98,540/y |
| F. Camacho | Support Engineer | San Francisco | 47 | Tue 7th Jul 09 | $87,500/y |
| S. Baldwin | Data Coordinator | Singapore | 64 | Mon 9th Apr 12 | $138,575/y |
| Z. Frank | Software Engineer | New York | 63 | Mon 4th Jan 10 | $125,250/y |
| Z. Serrano | Software Engineer | San Francisco | 56 | Fri 1st Jun 12 | $115,000/y |
| J. Acosta | Junior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 43 | Fri 1st Feb 13 | $75,650/y |
| C. Stevens | Sales Assistant | New York | 46 | Tue 6th Dec 11 | $145,600/y |
| H. Butler | Regional Director | London | 47 | Mon 21st Mar 11 | $356,250/y |
| L. Greer | Systems Administrator | London | 21 | Fri 27th Feb 09 | $103,500/y |
| J. Alexander | Developer | San Francisco | 30 | Wed 14th Jul 10 | $86,500/y |
| S. Decker | Regional Director | Edinburgh | 51 | Thu 13th Nov 08 | $183,000/y |
| M. Bruce | Javascript Developer | Singapore | 29 | Mon 27th Jun 11 | $183,000/y |
| D. Snider | Customer Support | New York | 27 | Tue 25th Jan 11 | $112,000/y |
The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#example').DataTable();
} );
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:
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.