Can I make it so a dropdown filter doesn't need the specific option?

Tom98

Hi there,

In one of my datatables, there's a column with 'status' which displays the status of a submission and the date of submission. For example: unread - 2022-05-26. I'd like to be able to sort this column by only the status, without taking the date into account. Of course, I could place the date in a separate column, but I think this would look a lot cleaner. Is it possible to change the filter as such?

kthorngren

Guessing you are referring to the code in this column search example. This code builds the select list:

                    column
                        .data()
                        .unique()
                        .sort()
                        .each(function (d, j) {
                            select.append('<option value="' + d + '">' + d + '</option>');
                        });

You can use column().index() to if the column is the status column and if so use different code to get a unique list of statuses to populate the select options. Something like this pseudo code:

if (column.index() === 3) {
  // Code to get unique list of statuses to append to the options list.
} else {
  column
    .data()
    .unique()
    .sort()
    .each(function (d, j) {
       select.append('<option value="' + d + '">' + d + '</option>');
    });
}

Kevin

Tom98

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for this example! I've got the right values in the dropdown now, but when using this dropdown to filter, it always returns no records. I guess this is the case because I'm trying to filter on 'unread', but the value in the table is 'unread - 2022-05-24' for example. Is it possible to only filter on the first part of the value in the table?

kthorngren

By doing the same thing with the column().search(). In the example it uses this regex search:

column.search(val ? '^' + val + '$' : '', true, false).draw();

Maybe something like this would work for that particular column:

column.search(val ? '^' + val + '.*' : '', true, false).draw();

The expectation is this will search for unread at the beginning of the string and match any characters after.

Kevin

Tom98

That's it! Thanks so much for your help