DataTables Blog

DataTables 2!

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 14:00:00 GMT

It is with real pleasure that I announce the general availability of DataTables 2. It has been a long time in coming, with aspects of its development starting in 2018, ...

Experiment: Import Maps

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 14:00:00 GMT

With ES modules gaining traction throughout the entire Javascript ecosystem, it is natural to want to use them directly in the browser. We can do that through the type="module" attribute ...

Loaders for plug-ins

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Plug-ins are a very important part of the DataTables eco-system. They expand DataTables' capabilities, wrap common actions into simple functions and provide a way for code to be shared in ...

Editor 2.1

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 13:30:00 GMT

I'm delighted to announce the immediate availability of Editor 2.1 and DataTables 1.13.2. Editor 2.1 is the cumulation of months of tweaks, features and fixes, and you'll be able to see ...

Vue3 component

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 14:30:00 GMT

Vue.js is a front-end Javascript framework that is widely used for creating reactive web-applications. It is consistently one of the most popular frameworks around, and in this post I will ...

RequireJS anyone?

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 17:30:00 GMT

RequireJS is, in web-terms, an old technology now (some might say ancient), but it is still in wide use and there have been a number of questions about RequireJS and ...

DataTables 1.12

Fri, 13 May 2022 11:00:00 GMT

It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of DataTables 1.12. This is an incremental upgrade, modernising many parts of our default styling and significantly improving internationalisation abilities. As ...

Social Media for DataTables and CloudTables

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 10:00:00 GMT

DataTables and CloudTables are entering the social media era! On Twitter, there are feeds for DataTables and CloudTables. These feeds will be used for posting when new releases are available, we'll ...

Introducing StateRestore

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMT

StateRestore is a new extension for DataTables that builds on the stateSave initialisation option by allowing users to save multiple states which can then be restored at a later point. ...

Fuzzy Search Plug-in

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:00:00 GMT

Fuzzy searching is used in search engines and databases to perform searches that will match results which are similar, but not necessarily exactly the same as the search term. This ...

Cascading lists in Editor (part 2!)

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 14:46:00 GMT

This is a short blog post to update an earlier one! Back in 2017, this post discussed how to create cascading lists in Editor. Many people have since requested that ...

Bootstrap 5 and Bulma styling

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 17:00:00 GMT

DataTables has long had the ability to integrate with external styling libraries, ensuring that your tables look and feel the same as the rest of your site or application. Today, ...

Type Detection Library

Mon, 17 May 2021 11:00:00 GMT

Over the last few weeks and months we have been working on a Type Detection Library. It is not used in DataTables, but it is used in Cloudtables to automatically ...

Internationalisation Contributions

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 11:00:00 GMT

DataTables's internationalisation plug-ins allow the presentation layer of DataTables to be localised. The aim has always been to make it as easy as possible for the community to submit translations ...

Editor 2

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 10:00:00 GMT

I am delighted to introduce Editor 2! It has been almost 9 years since I originally introduced Editor, and the v1 series of releases have introduced a large number of ...

Bootstrapped Podcast

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 10:00:00 GMT

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to Steve McLeod of the Bootstrapped podcast. It was recorded and is now available as a podcast. We discuss how I started DataTables ...

Highcharts Integration

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 17:00:00 GMT

Recently, we've had some feedback asking about displaying information from a DataTable in a graphical format. This is quite possible to do using our API and a charting library. There ...

Introducing SearchBuilder

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 11:00:00 GMT

SearchBuilder is a new extension for DataTables that allows the end user to apply advanced filtering to your tables. In a step up in complexity from SearchPanes, SearchBuilder allows for ...

Editor QR Scanner Integration

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 12:00:00 GMT

Recently we received an interesting forum post asking if it was possible to integrate a QR scanner into Editor. I'm glad to say that it is indeed possible and in ...

Introducing CloudTables

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 12:00:00 GMT

I'm delighted to introduce our third major product to you - CloudTables. CloudTables joins our existing DataTables and Editor products, building upon the foundations laid by both, making CRUD development ...

Using Editor's libraries for server-side processing

Tue, 12 May 2020 11:50:00 GMT

With SearchPanes 1.1 now released and supporting server-side processing we thought it would be worth while to write a blog post detailing how to use server-side processing with the Editor ...

SearchPanes Release

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 10:50:00 GMT

Allan previously introduced SearchPanes as an experiment on a blog post asking for feedback. The feedback was good with many taking an interest in improving DataTables searching functionality and I ...

RowGroup Tricks and Tips

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 14:41:00 GMT

Recently it was suggested that we should allow RowGroup to allow for custom groupings such as number ranges. This is not only possible but very straightforward to achieve. This post ...

October releases - 2019

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 11:00:00 GMT

I'm delighted to announce the release of DataTables 1.10.20, Editor 1.9.1 and most of the DataTables extensions. These are patch versions, but address a number of issues that have come ...

DataTables download statistics - 2019

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 11:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone, I'm Sandy and I've been working on DataTables with the rest of the team since the start of the Summer. I am currently studying Computer and Electronic Systems ...

Scroll To Top

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 16:56:00 GMT

By default, the paging controls of a DataTable (the Next, Previous and page number buttons) are placed beneath the table. If you have a large number of rows which won't ...

Refreshing data before editing

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 13:10:00 GMT

A web-based CRUD system such as Editor is by its very nature concurrent - i.e. multiple users could be updating data at the same time. Those users might be in ...

Installing Editor in WordPress

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 12:10:00 GMT

There's been several forum questions recently asking how to configure DataTables or Editor within a WordPress website. This blog post provides a simple demonstration to quickly get DataTables and Editor ...

Parent / child editing in child rows

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 12:38:00 GMT

Happy New Year everyone. Last year we took a bit of a step back from the blog while focusing on other aspects of DataTables, the extensions and support, but in ...

Debugger update

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 16:38:00 GMT

Back in 2012 I introduced the first version of the DataTables debugger. Today I'm happy to present an updated version that introduces a number of new features as well as ...

SearchFade

Tue, 08 May 2018 15:24:00 GMT

Hi everyone, I'm Colin and I joined the DataTables team late last year to head-up testing and to provide customer support by helping to answer questions in the DataTables forum. A ...

Vertical scroll fitting

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 14:24:00 GMT

Back in 2015 I introduced a plug-in for DataTables which provides the ability to dynamically alter the page length of a table to have it fit inside a container. This ...

Experiment: SearchPane

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 14:41:00 GMT

Normally when I release new software for DataTables, I'll build it in a way that suits my own needs, generalising where I think it suitable, and then publish it and ...

Queuing changes in Editor

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:33:00 GMT

When presenting editable data to users, there will be occasions where you (or the end user!) wish to queue up multiple changes to be submitted all at the same time. ...

Cascading lists in Editor

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 14:46:00 GMT

Working with categories and sub-categories is a very common action in data intensive applications. It can be useful both for the programmer (i.e. you!) in terms of data manipulation and ...

Editor and NPM

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 17:35:00 GMT

npm has become the de facto package manager for Javascript libraries, owing in part to how easy it makes it to install software and dependencies, but also due to the ...

Deep linking into DataTables

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:55:00 GMT

A question that comes up relatively frequently in the forums is "how do I deep link into a DataTable?" This is usually asked in the context of SEO where you ...

Always visible editing panel

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 22:43:00 GMT

When you are working with a software library, you want it to fit into your site and design - not have it force you to its way of thinking. This ...

Iterators in DataTables

Wed, 31 May 2017 16:23:00 GMT

By its fundamental nature DataTables operates with repeating data. As developers we naturally want to be able to access and work with that data, processing each item one at a ...

RowGroup - new extension

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 15:08:00 GMT

Grouping rows into sets of data that share a single characteristic can be very powerful tool to let end user's understand and take knowledge from a complex data set. A ...

Ajax loaded row details

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 21:43:00 GMT

Showing detailed information about a row in a DataTable is a popular feature. It allows the main table view to be accessible and easy for the end user to process, ...

Locale based sorting

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 13:18:00 GMT

Let's stereotype for a moment: developers whose first (and in many cases, such as my own, only) language is English, don't always appreciate localisation issues to the degree we should. ...

Search highlighting with mark.js

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 12:00:00 GMT

Contributed post This post has been written by Julian Motz, the author of mark.js and discusses the integration options between DataTables and his search highlighting ...

Sorting with absolute positioned data

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 12:00:00 GMT

The ordering of information in a DataTable is probably the aspect that I cover most in this blog (enums and dates for example, and more to come), but that is ...

Editor 1.6

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 12:05:00 GMT

I'm very pleased to announce the release of Editor 1.6, the sixth major update to Editor in its 1.x series. It is a free upgrade to all existing license holders ...

Dynamic enum sorting

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 15:37:00 GMT

Updates to this post since its original publication: 1st March 2024: Change $.fn.dataTable.enum to DataTable.enum in keeping with the rest of the documentation ...

Spring updates - 2016

Tue, 24 May 2016 12:00:00 GMT

A bit-and-pieces blog post today with information on the latest releases of DataTables software, introducing our new site search and also SpryMedia's first intern! ...

Parent / child editing with Editor

Fri, 25 Mar 2016 14:30:00 GMT

When working with data from a database, it is quite a common pattern to use parent / child representations of the data. This allows the end user to select a ...

Ellipsis renderer

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 14:11:00 GMT

During your work with DataTables, there will be occasions when the data obtained from the source feed is not in the format that you wish to show to your end ...

Generator update

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:51:00 GMT

Editor is all about saving time for developers creating CRUD systems - who wants to write yet more upload logic!? While Editor can reduce an editable table to just a ...

Download statistics

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 11:56:00 GMT

Alongside the release of DataTables 1.10.8 in August, a new download builder was introduced. The download builder provides options to easily build a package that suits your own needs - ...

NPM and Bower

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 15:53:00 GMT

Package and dependency management is an important aspect of many web-applications, particularly as their complexity continues to grow and many third party libraries are required. With the release of DataTables ...

Editor's server-side events

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 15:06:00 GMT

This is the second in a series of posts which describes the new features of Editor 1.5. Previously multi-row editing was the focus of discussion, while in this post I ...

Multi-row bulk editing

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 16:22:00 GMT

Editor 1.5 has now been available for almost a month and although the new features are documented in the release notes and shown on the examples pages, I'd like to ...

Update extravaganza

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 12:07:00 GMT

I'm delighted to announce the release of a number of major updates to the DataTables extensions and web-site that mark a significant step forward for the whole project. This has ...

Git repo structure update

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 17:07:00 GMT

One of the great challenges of maintaining any complex project is that of organisation and DataTables is no exception. The project is primarily split between the core library, extensions and ...

DataTables 1.10.7

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 16:59:00 GMT

DataTables 1.10.7 has now been released and is a recommended update for all developers working with DataTables 1.10. I hadn't been planning to make this release until the end of May, ...

Vertical page fitting

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 15:24:00 GMT

In many web-apps and web based control panels it is often desirable to have the displayed layout and content automatically scale to fit the user's browser, allowing you to present ...

Editor 1.4 / DataTables 1.10.5

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 14:39:00 GMT

I'm delighted to use my first blog post of 2015 to announce the releases of Editor 1.4 and DataTables 1.10.5. 2015 is going to be an exciting year for the ...

Ultimate date / time sorting plug-in

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 15:02:00 GMT

Date and time can be represented in almost limitless ways with different formats used to show a data point to end users. A long format such as "Thursday, 18th December ...

Editor 1.4 beta - .NET

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 15:02:00 GMT

When Editor was originally developed, it was clear that a suite of libraries should be available for the server-side that compliment the client-side Javascript library and make installation of the ...

Table captions

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 15:57:00 GMT

There are many under-used, or under-rated, tags in the HTML specification, but one that is of particular interest to us in tabular display is the caption tag. This little known element ...

Search result highlighting

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 12:00:00 GMT

DataTables' built in search features provide the ability for the end user to very quickly search the data that is contained in a table, filtering the results down into just ...

DataTables 1.10.3

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 10:00:00 GMT

A minor release of any component that forms the DataTables suite of libraries wouldn't typically be cause for a blog post, with the release information being announced in the release ...

Sliding child rows

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:50:00 GMT

The ability to show information that relates to a specific record in a table can greatly simplify the primary display of a table for the end user, while still allowing ...

Alphabet input search - Part III

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:04:00 GMT

In the final part of this series of posts that explores some of the search options and APIs for extending DataTables I will detail how to convert the alphabet search ...

Permanent inline checkboxes

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 16:49:00 GMT

The primary interaction methods used with Editor is its main lightbox input form, the bubble editor or inline editing, but it is also quite possible to construct your own form ...

Alphabet input search - Part II

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:32:00 GMT

Continuing a three part series of posts exploring the DataTables custom search options, API and feature plug-ins, this second post extends the alphabet search control introduced in part I of ...

Alphabet input search - Part I

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 14:32:00 GMT

Search is a core feature of DataTables - in fact it was the first feature that was implemented in the code, way back in 2007 as it was key to ...

Business: UK VAT exchange rates

Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:04:00 GMT

This post is a little bit off the beaten path for the DataTables blog. Rather than discussing DataTables or its extensions, here I will present one of the tools that ...

Duplicate buttons in Editor

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 10:15:00 GMT

Editor provides built in support for the three basic buttons needed in an editable DataTable: Create, Edit and Delete. One further action that is particularly useful is the ability to ...

Introducing Responsive for DataTables

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 11:49:00 GMT

When building a modern web-site you will typically use a responsive design. The advantages of doing so are clear; one site that works on all devices regardless of screen size ...

DataTables 1.10.1, Editor 1.3.2 and more

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:36:00 GMT

I'm delighted to announce the release of both DataTables 1.10.1 and Editor 1.3.2. In addition to these releases all DataTables extensions have also been updated and released. The current releases ...

Nominet Internet Awards shortlist

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:51:00 GMT

I'm delighted to announce that DataTables has been shortlisted in the Innovative Internet Business category of the Nominet Internet Awards 2014 (NIA). Nominet are the organisation who manage the .uk ...

Font Awesome integration

Fri, 06 Jun 2014 12:39:00 GMT

Icon fonts, such as Font Awesome, can provide a huge number of graphical elements for a web-site in a bandwidth efficient manner. They do this by building on the foundations ...

Support and forums updates

Mon, 26 May 2014 15:53:00 GMT

Over the past six years the DataTables forums have been a cornerstone of this web-site, and more generally the DataTables project as a whole. At the time of writing this ...

DataTables 1.10.0 released

Thu, 01 May 2014 13:39:00 GMT

I'm delighted to announce the release of DataTables 1.10.0 today! This latest version of DataTables enhances the feature set, performance as usability of DataTables in just about every way, making ...

DataTables 1.10.0 release candidate

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 16:58:00 GMT

Today sees us take another step closer to DataTables 1.10, with 1.10.0 release candidate 1 (1.10.0-rc.1)! Release candidate status for the software means that I think it is ready to ...

DataTables 1.10 beta

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 16:25:00 GMT

It is with great pleasure that today I release DataTables 1.10.0-beta.1; the first beta release of the next generation of DataTables which is brimming with new features, improvements to performance ...

HTML 5 Clipboard and File APIs

Fri, 31 Jan 2014 16:16:00 GMT

TableTools adds copy-to-clipboard and save-to-file exporting abilities to DataTables, via simple to use buttons that the end user can click upon to activate. These two abilities, however, are provided by ...

JS Bin update

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:40:00 GMT

When answering questions regarding DataTables, demonstrating how something works, or creating a test case for something that doesn't work, it is very useful to be able to show a small ...

Orthogonal data

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Data is complex. Not only will data displayed in your tables have rules relating how each data point corresponds to the others in your table, but also each data point ...

Inline editing

Thu, 31 May 2012 22:45:00 GMT

In modern web-applications, one common use for tables is to show a grid of information which can be modified by the end user - a typical CRUD (Create, Read, Update, ...

Introducing Editor

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:15:00 GMT

The primary goal of DataTables has always been to make data sets, no matter how complex, easy to access and get information from. DataTables has come along way from its ...

DataTables debugger

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:45:00 GMT

As with any complex piece of software, DataTables has a huge range of configuration options and debugging the application when you encounter a problem can be quite a daunting prospect. ...

Twitter Bootstrap 2

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

The Twitter Bootstrap folks have just released v2 of their UI framework that has a number of improvements on the v1 series. However, as might be expected from a major ...

Microsoft CDN

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

When using Javascript libraries such as DataTables you want your users to be able to get the software as quickly as possible and one way to help achieve this goal ...

localStorage for state saving

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:30:00 GMT

One of the greatest challenges in writing a software library is in maintaining its API and ensuring that upgrades to newer versions of the library are as pain free as ...

Twitter Bootstrap

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:30:00 GMT

Twitter Bootstrap is a CSS framework that lets you quickly and easily build a user interface that has a unified look and feel. The great news is that it is ...

Site updates - JS Bin and more

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:30:00 GMT

Its an exciting time this November. Along with some significant changes in my own circumstances I've been hard at work on number of updates for the DataTables site, which I'm ...

Getting started with DataTables

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 15:45:00 GMT

DataTables is a powerful Javascript library for adding interaction features to HTML tables, and while simplicity is a core design principle for the project as a whole, it can be ...

DataTables support

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:00:00 GMT

As DataTables has grown, it has become clear that you, the developers using DataTables, want the option of have professional support at hand for when you need it, and I'm ...

Drill-down rows

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:30:00 GMT

table.display td.details { border: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #ccc; } div.innerDetails { display: none } $(document).ready(function() { var anOpen = []; var ...

Introducing Scroller

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 10:15:00 GMT

As part of DataTables 1.8 release a new plug-in called "Scroller" was introduced as part of the download package. Scroller is an implementation of virtual scrolling for DataTables, which presents ...

DataTables 1.8

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 17:30:00 GMT

It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of DataTables 1.8.0. This update provides a significant update to the capabilities of DataTables, with emphasis on making it much easier ...

Creating beautiful and functional tables with DataTables

Tue, 10 May 2011 18:45:00 GMT

DataTables has a wealth of features enabled by default (as can be seen in the zero-configuration example) but the example stylesheets that come in the DataTables package are intentionally rather ...

Extended data source options with DataTables

Sun, 01 May 2011 10:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the new DataTables blog! I would like to use this section of the site to introduce various topics which are useful for DataTables and give tutorials about how ...