When working with large data sets (50'000 rows+), you might find that you want to harness the power of the SQL database on your server, having it perform ordering, searching and paging for you - tasks which database engines are highly tuned for. With a large amount of data on the client-side, the browser can start to slow down, so DataTables has a server-side processing mode which hands off all of the "hard work" to the server. This allows DataTables to display data from results sets which may be many millions of records in size.
The Editor server-side libraries (both PHP, .NET and NodeJS) have automatic detection of a server-side processing request from DataTables and will automatically
process them as required. Thus, to switch your table to server-side processing mode, all you need to do is use the DataTables serverSide option, setting it to
true. You will likely also want to use POST data, which can be done using the ajax option, as shown in this example. The Editor
libraries will then perform all additional logic for you automatically!
| First name | Last name | Position | Office | Start date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First name | Last name | Position | Office | Start date | Salary |
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/staff",
"table": "#example",
"fields": [ {
"label": "First name:",
"name": "first_name"
}, {
"label": "Last name:",
"name": "last_name"
}, {
"label": "Position:",
"name": "position"
}, {
"label": "Office:",
"name": "office"
}, {
"label": "Extension:",
"name": "extn"
}, {
"label": "Start date:",
"name": "start_date",
"type": "datetime"
}, {
"label": "Salary:",
"name": "salary"
}
]
} );
$('#example').DataTable( {
dom: "Bfrtip",
ajax: {
url: "/api/staff",
type: "POST"
},
serverSide: true,
columns: [
{ data: "first_name" },
{ data: "last_name" },
{ data: "position" },
{ data: "office" },
{ data: "start_date" },
{ data: "salary", render: $.fn.dataTable.render.number( ',', '.', 0, '$' ) }
],
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.