When using joined database tables, there are times when you might wish to use a one-to-many relationship for your data, and display that as an editable interface for your system's users.
On the client-side, Editor achieved this quite simply by making use of DataTables' powerful columns.data and columns.render options to display the
data and the fields.name option
in Editor. These options all provide the ability to use array based data through Javascript square bracket notation ([]) - see the DataTables columns.data documentation for detailed
information on the syntax that can be used for these options.
In this case each record in our users database table can have different access permissions granted. The one-to-many link is provided by a join
table on the database side.
For the editing interface Editor presents this as a checkbox list of options which the editor can use to select the options they want to assign to a particular user.
On the server-side the Editor PHP, .NET and NodeJS libraries all provide a Join class that can be used to construct complex CRUD queries for
one-to-many data manipulation. For further information about using the libraries to build an editable DataTable with JOINed tables, please see the join
documentation (PHP | .NET | NodeJS).
| First name | Last name | Location | Permissions |
|---|---|---|---|
| First name | Last name | Location | Permissions |
The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
var editor; // use a global for the submit and return data rendering in the examples
$(document).ready(function() {
editor = new $.fn.dataTable.Editor( {
ajax: "/api/joinArray",
table: "#example",
fields: [ {
label: "First name:",
name: "users.first_name"
}, {
label: "Last name:",
name: "users.last_name"
}, {
label: "Site:",
name: "users.site",
type: "select"
}, {
"label": "Permissions:",
"name": "permission[].id",
"type": "checkbox"
}
]
} );
$('#example').DataTable( {
dom: "Bfrtip",
ajax: {
url: "/api/joinArray",
type: 'POST'
},
columns: [
{ data: "users.first_name" },
{ data: "users.last_name" },
{ data: "sites.name" },
{ data: "permission", render: "[, ].name" }
],
select: true,
buttons: [
{ extend: "create", editor: editor },
{ extend: "edit", editor: editor },
{ extend: "remove", editor: editor }
]
} );
} );
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.