Preamble

A fairly common requirement for highly interactive tables which are displayed on the web is to have a column which with a 'counter' for the row number. This column should not be sortable, and change dynamically as the sorting and filtering applied to the table is altered by the end user.

This example shows how this can be achieved with DataTables, where the first column is the counter column, and is updated when sorting or filtering occurs. Also the first column is marked as un-sortable and initial sorting is applied only on the second column.

Live example

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#example').dataTable( {
		"fnDrawCallback": function ( oSettings ) {
			/* Need to redo the counters if filtered or sorted */
			if ( oSettings.bSorted || oSettings.bFiltered )
			{
				for ( var i=0, iLen=oSettings.aiDisplay.length ; i<iLen ; i++ )
				{
					$('td:eq(0)', oSettings.aoData[ oSettings.aiDisplay[i] ].nTr ).html( i+1 );
				}
			}
		},
		"aoColumnDefs": [
			{ "bSortable": false, "aTargets": [ 0 ] }
		],
		"aaSorting": [[ 1, 'asc' ]]
	} );
} );

Other examples

Basic initialisation

• Zero configuration
• Feature enablement
• Sorting data
• Multi-column sorting
• Multiple tables
• Hidden columns
• DOM positioning
• State saving
• Alternative pagination styles
• Scrolling: Horizontal / Vertical / Both / Themed
• Change language information (internationalisation)
• ThemeRoller themes (Smoothness)

Advanced initialisation

• Events (pre initialisation)
• Events (post initialisation)
• Column rendering
• Sorting without HTML tags
• Multiple table controls (sDom)
• Defining length menu options
• Custom toolbar (element) around table
• Row highlighting with CSS
• Column grouping through col/row spans
• Row grouping
• Row callback
• Footer callback
• Change language information from a file (internationalisation)

Data sources

• DOM
• Javascript array
• Ajax source
• Server side processing

Server-side processing

• Obtain server-side data
• Add extra HTTP variables
• Use HTTP POST
• Custom column ordering (in callback data)
• Pipelining data (reduce Ajax calls for paging)
• Show and hide details about a particular record
• User selectable rows (multiple rows)

API

• Dynamically add a new row
• Individual column filtering (using "input" elements)
• Individual column filtering (using "select" elements)
• Highlight rows and columns
• Show and hide details about a particular record
• User selectable rows (multiple rows)
• User selectable rows (single row) and delete rows
• Editable rows (with jEditable)
• Submit form with elements in table
• Index column (static number column)
• Show and hide columns dynamically
• API function use in initialisation object (callback)
• DataTables scrolling and tabs
• Regular expression filtering

Plug-ins

• Add custom API functions
• Sorting and type detection
• Custom pagination controls
• Range filtering / custom filtering
• Live DOM sorting
• Automatic HTML type detection

Please refer to the DataTables documentation for full information about its API properties and methods.