Return key to search

It can be useful at times to require the end user to press the return key to trigger a search action, rather than performing a search on each keystroke, particularly when using server-side processing. As of v1.11, this option exists in DataTables as the search.return parameter as shown in this example.

First name	Last name	Position	Office	Start date	Salary
First name	Last name	Position	Office	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:

$('#example').DataTable({
	ajax: 'scripts/server_processing.php',
	processing: true,
	search: {
		return: true
	},
	serverSide: true
});

new DataTable('#example', {
	ajax: 'scripts/server_processing.php',
	processing: true,
	search: {
		return: true
	},
	serverSide: true
});

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.

Return key to search

Other examples

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DateTime

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