This example shows the use of DataTables' ability to show and hide child rows which are attached to a parent row in the host table. This is often used to show additional information about a row, particularly when you wish to convey more information about a row than there is space for in the host table.
The example below shows server-side processing being used with the first column having an event
listener attached to it which will toggle the child row's display. This is set up using columns.data and columns.defaultContent, in combination with CSS to show an empty
cell with a background image which can be clicked upon.
The event handler makes use of the row().child methods to firstly check if a row is already displayed, and
if so hide it, if not show it. The content of the child row is, in this example, defined by the
formatDetails() function, but you would replace that with whatever you wanted to show the
content required, possibly including, for example, an Ajax call to the server to obtain the extra
information to show. Note that the format details function has access to the full data source object
for the row, including information that is not actually shown in the table (the salary parameter for
example).
| First name | Last name | Position | Office | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First name | Last name | Position | Office |
The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
function format ( d ) {
return 'Full name: '+d.first_name+' '+d.last_name+'<br>'+
'Salary: '+d.salary+'<br>'+
'The child row can contain any data you wish, including links, images, inner tables etc.';
}
$(document).ready(function() {
var dt = $('#example').DataTable( {
"processing": true,
"serverSide": true,
"ajax": "scripts/objects.php",
"columns": [
{
"class": "details-control",
"sortable": false,
"data": null,
"defaultContent": ""
},
{ "data": "first_name" },
{ "data": "last_name" },
{ "data": "position" },
{ "data": "office" }
],
"sorting": [[1, 'asc']]
} );
$('#example tbody').on('click', 'tr td:first-child', function () {
var tr = $(this).parents('tr');
var row = dt.row( tr );
if ( row.child.isShown() ) {
tr.removeClass( 'details' );
row.child.hide();
}
else {
tr.addClass( 'details' );
row.child( format( row.data() ) ).show();
}
} );
} );
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:
td.details-control {
background: url('../resources/details_open.png') no-repeat center center;
cursor: pointer;
}
tr.details td.details-control {
background: url('../resources/details_close.png') no-repeat center center;
}
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.