Preamble

There are times when you may wish to call API functions inside the DataTables callback functions (for example fnInitComplete, fnRowCallback etc). The complicating issue with this is that the object hasn't fully initialised, so you can't assign the result to something like oTable and then use oTable in the callback. However, this is catered for by the execution scope of the callback function. Here 'this' is the DataTables object that is created for the table.

In this example you will be able to see that this.fnGetNodes() is used, and also the value of this stored in the variable 'that' so it can be used inside the jQuery click function, where the execution scope has been changed to the td element!). The action here is to apply the filter with the value of what is in each cell.

Live example

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('#example').dataTable( {
		"fnInitComplete": function () {
			var 
				that = this,
				nTrs = this.fnGetNodes();
			$('td', nTrs).click( function () {
				that.fnFilter( this.innerHTML );
			} );
		}
	} );
} );

Other examples

Basic initialisation

• Zero configuration
• Feature enablement
• Sorting data
• Multi-column sorting
• Multiple tables
• Hidden columns
• DOM positioning
• State saving
• Alternative pagination styles
• Scrolling: Horizontal / Vertical / Both / Themed
• Change language information (internationalisation)
• ThemeRoller themes (Smoothness)

Advanced initialisation

• Events (pre initialisation)
• Events (post initialisation)
• Column rendering
• Sorting without HTML tags
• Multiple table controls (sDom)
• Defining length menu options
• Custom toolbar (element) around table
• Row highlighting with CSS
• Column grouping through col/row spans
• Row grouping
• Row callback
• Footer callback
• Change language information from a file (internationalisation)

Data sources

• DOM
• Javascript array
• Ajax source
• Server side processing

Server-side processing

• Obtain server-side data
• Add extra HTTP variables
• Use HTTP POST
• Custom column ordering (in callback data)
• Pipelining data (reduce Ajax calls for paging)
• Show and hide details about a particular record
• User selectable rows (multiple rows)

API

• Dynamically add a new row
• Individual column filtering (using "input" elements)
• Individual column filtering (using "select" elements)
• Highlight rows and columns
• Show and hide details about a particular record
• User selectable rows (multiple rows)
• User selectable rows (single row) and delete rows
• Editable rows (with jEditable)
• Submit form with elements in table
• Index column (static number column)
• Show and hide columns dynamically
• API function use in initialisation object (callback)
• DataTables scrolling and tabs
• Regular expression filtering

Plug-ins

• Add custom API functions
• Sorting and type detection
• Custom pagination controls
• Range filtering / custom filtering
• Live DOM sorting
• Automatic HTML type detection

Please refer to the DataTables documentation for full information about its API properties and methods.