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 the
columns.data option).
A <table> must be available on the page for DataTables to use. This examples
shows the element being added by Javascript and then initialising the DataTable with a set of data from
a Javascript array.
The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
var dataSet = [
['Trident','Internet Explorer 4.0','Win 95+','4','X'],
['Trident','Internet Explorer 5.0','Win 95+','5','C'],
['Trident','Internet Explorer 5.5','Win 95+','5.5','A'],
['Trident','Internet Explorer 6','Win 98+','6','A'],
['Trident','Internet Explorer 7','Win XP SP2+','7','A'],
['Trident','AOL browser (AOL desktop)','Win XP','6','A'],
['Gecko','Firefox 1.0','Win 98+ / OSX.2+','1.7','A'],
['Gecko','Firefox 1.5','Win 98+ / OSX.2+','1.8','A'],
['Gecko','Firefox 2.0','Win 98+ / OSX.2+','1.8','A'],
['Gecko','Firefox 3.0','Win 2k+ / OSX.3+','1.9','A'],
['Gecko','Camino 1.0','OSX.2+','1.8','A'],
['Gecko','Camino 1.5','OSX.3+','1.8','A'],
['Gecko','Netscape 7.2','Win 95+ / Mac OS 8.6-9.2','1.7','A'],
['Gecko','Netscape Browser 8','Win 98SE+','1.7','A'],
['Gecko','Netscape Navigator 9','Win 98+ / OSX.2+','1.8','A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.0','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.1','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1.1,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.2','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1.2,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.3','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1.3,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.4','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1.4,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.5','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1.5,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.6','Win 95+ / OSX.1+',1.6,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.7','Win 98+ / OSX.1+',1.7,'A'],
['Gecko','Mozilla 1.8','Win 98+ / OSX.1+',1.8,'A'],
['Gecko','Seamonkey 1.1','Win 98+ / OSX.2+','1.8','A'],
['Gecko','Epiphany 2.20','Gnome','1.8','A'],
['Webkit','Safari 1.2','OSX.3','125.5','A'],
['Webkit','Safari 1.3','OSX.3','312.8','A'],
['Webkit','Safari 2.0','OSX.4+','419.3','A'],
['Webkit','Safari 3.0','OSX.4+','522.1','A'],
['Webkit','OmniWeb 5.5','OSX.4+','420','A'],
['Webkit','iPod Touch / iPhone','iPod','420.1','A'],
['Webkit','S60','S60','413','A'],
['Presto','Opera 7.0','Win 95+ / OSX.1+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera 7.5','Win 95+ / OSX.2+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera 8.0','Win 95+ / OSX.2+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera 8.5','Win 95+ / OSX.2+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera 9.0','Win 95+ / OSX.3+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera 9.2','Win 88+ / OSX.3+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera 9.5','Win 88+ / OSX.3+','-','A'],
['Presto','Opera for Wii','Wii','-','A'],
['Presto','Nokia N800','N800','-','A'],
['Presto','Nintendo DS browser','Nintendo DS','8.5','C/A<sup>1</sup>'],
['KHTML','Konqureror 3.1','KDE 3.1','3.1','C'],
['KHTML','Konqureror 3.3','KDE 3.3','3.3','A'],
['KHTML','Konqureror 3.5','KDE 3.5','3.5','A'],
['Tasman','Internet Explorer 4.5','Mac OS 8-9','-','X'],
['Tasman','Internet Explorer 5.1','Mac OS 7.6-9','1','C'],
['Tasman','Internet Explorer 5.2','Mac OS 8-X','1','C'],
['Misc','NetFront 3.1','Embedded devices','-','C'],
['Misc','NetFront 3.4','Embedded devices','-','A'],
['Misc','Dillo 0.8','Embedded devices','-','X'],
['Misc','Links','Text only','-','X'],
['Misc','Lynx','Text only','-','X'],
['Misc','IE Mobile','Windows Mobile 6','-','C'],
['Misc','PSP browser','PSP','-','C'],
['Other browsers','All others','-','-','U']
];
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#demo').html( '<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="display" id="example"></table>' );
$('#example').dataTable( {
"data": dataSet,
"columns": [
{ "title": "Engine" },
{ "title": "Browser" },
{ "title": "Platform" },
{ "title": "Version", "class": "center" },
{ "title": "Grade", "class": "center" }
]
} );
} );
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.