Server-side processing
There are many ways to get your data into DataTables, and if you are working with seriously large databases, you might want to consider using the server-side options that DataTables provides. With server-side processing enabled, all actions that DataTables performs (such as paging, searching and ordering) are handed off to a server where an SQL engine (or similar) can perform these actions on the large data set (after all, that's what the database engine is designed for!). As such, each draw of the table will result in a new Ajax request to get the required data.
Server-side processing is enabled by setting the serverSide
option to true
and providing an Ajax data source through the ajax
option.
This example shows a very simple table, matching the other client-side processing examples, but in this instance using server-side processing.
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,
serverSide: true
});
new DataTable('#example', {
ajax: 'scripts/server_processing.php',
processing: 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.
Other examples
Basic initialisation
- Zero configuration
- Feature enable / disable
- Default ordering (sorting)
- Multi-column ordering
- Multiple tables
- Hidden columns
- Complex headers (rowspan and colspan)
- Flexible table width
- State saving
- Alternative pagination
- Data rendering
- Scroll - vertical
- Scroll - vertical, dynamic height
- Scroll - horizontal
- Scroll - horizontal and vertical
Advanced initialisation
- DOM / jQuery events
- DataTables events
- Column rendering
- Enter Key to Search
- Page length options
- Complex headers with column visibility
- Read HTML to data objects
- HTML5 data-* attributes - cell data
- HTML5 data-* attributes - table options
- Setting defaults
- Row created callback
- Row grouping
- Footer callback
- Order direction sequence control
- DOM element return from renderer
Styling
- Base style
- Base style - no styling classes
- Base style - cell borders
- Base style - compact
- Base style - hover
- Base style - order-column
- Base style - row borders
- Base style - stripe
- Bootstrap 3
- Bootstrap 4
- Bootstrap 5
- Foundation
- Fomantic-UI (formally Semantic-UI)
- Bulma
- jQuery UI ThemeRoller
- Material Design (Tech. preview)
- Tailwind CSS (Tech. preview)
- UIKit 3 (Tech. preview)
API
- Add rows
- Individual column searching (text inputs)
- Individual column searching (select inputs)
- Highlighting rows and columns
- Child rows (show extra / detailed information)
- Child rows with StateSave
- Row selection (multiple rows)
- Row selection and deletion (single row)
- Form inputs
- Index column
- Show / hide columns dynamically
- Using API in callbacks
- Scrolling and Bootstrap tabs
- Search API (regular expressions)
- HighCharts Integration