Enable / disable

It can often be useful to be able to dynamically enable and disable buttons based on the document state and other components in the table. A typical example of this is to enable a button that will take action on a selected row in the table, only when there is a row selected! If there is no row selected, the button should not take any action when clicked upon (i.e. it is disabled).

This example makes use of the Select extension for DataTables to provide row selection. A listener is added for the select event to know when the row selection has change in the table, allowing the button's enabled / disabled state to be changed through the button().enable() method.

The button() method is a selector method that will use the information given to it to select the buttons that the subsequent methods will take action on. There is also a buttons() method that can be used to select multiple buttons (the DataTables API makes significant use of this plural / singular distinction).

The button-selector used in this example is a simple index selector - button 1 and button 2. Based on the number of rows selected the enablement state is adjusted. The first button is enabled when there is only one row selected, the second when one or more rows are selected.

Note that the Select library provides a number of button types such as selected and selectedSingle that provide this enable / disabled option without the additional code shown in this example.

Name	Position	Office	Age	Start date	Salary
Tiger Nixon	System Architect	Edinburgh	61	2011-04-25	$320,800
Garrett Winters	Accountant	Tokyo	63	2011-07-25	$170,750
Ashton Cox	Junior Technical Author	San Francisco	66	2009-01-12	$86,000
Cedric Kelly	Senior Javascript Developer	Edinburgh	22	2012-03-29	$433,060
Airi Satou	Accountant	Tokyo	33	2008-11-28	$162,700
Brielle Williamson	Integration Specialist	New York	61	2012-12-02	$372,000
Herrod Chandler	Sales Assistant	San Francisco	59	2012-08-06	$137,500
Rhona Davidson	Integration Specialist	Tokyo	55	2010-10-14	$327,900
Colleen Hurst	Javascript Developer	San Francisco	39	2009-09-15	$205,500
Sonya Frost	Software Engineer	Edinburgh	23	2008-12-13	$103,600
Jena Gaines	Office Manager	London	30	2008-12-19	$90,560
Quinn Flynn	Support Lead	Edinburgh	22	2013-03-03	$342,000
Charde Marshall	Regional Director	San Francisco	36	2008-10-16	$470,600
Haley Kennedy	Senior Marketing Designer	London	43	2012-12-18	$313,500
Tatyana Fitzpatrick	Regional Director	London	19	2010-03-17	$385,750
Michael Silva	Marketing Designer	London	66	2012-11-27	$198,500
Paul Byrd	Chief Financial Officer (CFO)	New York	64	2010-06-09	$725,000
Gloria Little	Systems Administrator	New York	59	2009-04-10	$237,500
Bradley Greer	Software Engineer	London	41	2012-10-13	$132,000
Dai Rios	Personnel Lead	Edinburgh	35	2012-09-26	$217,500
Jenette Caldwell	Development Lead	New York	30	2011-09-03	$345,000
Yuri Berry	Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)	New York	40	2009-06-25	$675,000
Caesar Vance	Pre-Sales Support	New York	21	2011-12-12	$106,450
Doris Wilder	Sales Assistant	Sydney	23	2010-09-20	$85,600
Angelica Ramos	Chief Executive Officer (CEO)	London	47	2009-10-09	$1,200,000
Gavin Joyce	Developer	Edinburgh	42	2010-12-22	$92,575
Jennifer Chang	Regional Director	Singapore	28	2010-11-14	$357,650
Brenden Wagner	Software Engineer	San Francisco	28	2011-06-07	$206,850
Fiona Green	Chief Operating Officer (COO)	San Francisco	48	2010-03-11	$850,000
Shou Itou	Regional Marketing	Tokyo	20	2011-08-14	$163,000
Michelle House	Integration Specialist	Sydney	37	2011-06-02	$95,400
Suki Burks	Developer	London	53	2009-10-22	$114,500
Prescott Bartlett	Technical Author	London	27	2011-05-07	$145,000
Gavin Cortez	Team Leader	San Francisco	22	2008-10-26	$235,500
Martena Mccray	Post-Sales support	Edinburgh	46	2011-03-09	$324,050
Unity Butler	Marketing Designer	San Francisco	47	2009-12-09	$85,675
Howard Hatfield	Office Manager	San Francisco	51	2008-12-16	$164,500
Hope Fuentes	Secretary	San Francisco	41	2010-02-12	$109,850
Vivian Harrell	Financial Controller	San Francisco	62	2009-02-14	$452,500
Timothy Mooney	Office Manager	London	37	2008-12-11	$136,200
Jackson Bradshaw	Director	New York	65	2008-09-26	$645,750
Olivia Liang	Support Engineer	Singapore	64	2011-02-03	$234,500
Bruno Nash	Software Engineer	London	38	2011-05-03	$163,500
Sakura Yamamoto	Support Engineer	Tokyo	37	2009-08-19	$139,575
Thor Walton	Developer	New York	61	2013-08-11	$98,540
Finn Camacho	Support Engineer	San Francisco	47	2009-07-07	$87,500
Serge Baldwin	Data Coordinator	Singapore	64	2012-04-09	$138,575
Zenaida Frank	Software Engineer	New York	63	2010-01-04	$125,250
Zorita Serrano	Software Engineer	San Francisco	56	2012-06-01	$115,000
Jennifer Acosta	Junior Javascript Developer	Edinburgh	43	2013-02-01	$75,650
Cara Stevens	Sales Assistant	New York	46	2011-12-06	$145,600
Hermione Butler	Regional Director	London	47	2011-03-21	$356,250
Lael Greer	Systems Administrator	London	21	2009-02-27	$103,500
Jonas Alexander	Developer	San Francisco	30	2010-07-14	$86,500
Shad Decker	Regional Director	Edinburgh	51	2008-11-13	$183,000
Michael Bruce	Javascript Developer	Singapore	29	2011-06-27	$183,000
Donna Snider	Customer Support	New York	27	2011-01-25	$112,000
Name	Position	Office	Age	Start date	Salary

Javascript
HTML
CSS
Ajax
Server-side script
Comments

The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:

var table = $('#example').DataTable({
	layout: {
		topStart: {
			buttons: [
				{
					text: 'Row selected data',
					action: function (e, dt, node, config) {
						alert(
							'Row data: ' + JSON.stringify(dt.row({ selected: true }).data())
						);
					},
					enabled: false
				},
				{
					text: 'Count rows selected',
					action: function (e, dt, node, config) {
						alert('Rows: ' + dt.rows({ selected: true }).count());
					},
					enabled: false
				}
			]
		}
	},
	select: true
});

table.on('select deselect', function () {
	var selectedRows = table.rows({ selected: true }).count();

	table.button(0).enable(selectedRows === 1);
	table.button(1).enable(selectedRows > 0);
});

var table = new DataTable('#example', {
	layout: {
		topStart: {
			buttons: [
				{
					text: 'Row selected data',
					action: function (e, dt, node, config) {
						alert(
							'Row data: ' + JSON.stringify(dt.row({ selected: true }).data())
						);
					},
					enabled: false
				},
				{
					text: 'Count rows selected',
					action: function (e, dt, node, config) {
						alert('Rows: ' + dt.rows({ selected: true }).count());
					},
					enabled: false
				}
			]
		}
	},
	select: true
});

table.on('select deselect', function () {
	var selectedRows = table.rows({ selected: true }).count();

	table.button(0).enable(selectedRows === 1);
	table.button(1).enable(selectedRows > 0);
});

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.

Enable / disable

Other examples

Basic initialisation

HTML 5 data export

Column visibility

Print

API

Split buttons

Styling

DataTables