Deferred rendering feature

When working with large data sources performance is often of primary importance. For this reason DataTables will only create the table tr and td cells when they are drawn on the page. This feature is called deferred rendering and is enabled automatically since DataTables 2.

It is rare that you'll want to disable this feature, but if you do need to do so (for example you need to guarantee that all nodes are available for form submission or similar) this option can be set to false as shown in this example.

You won't notice any performance difference with just the standard DataTables data set, but for tens of thousands of rows it can make a significant difference and we recommend keeping it enabled.

Name Position Office Extn. Start date Salary
Name Position Office Extn. Start date Salary
  • Javascript
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Ajax
  • Server-side script
  • Comments

The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:

$('#example').DataTable({ ajax: 'data/arrays.txt', deferRender: false });
new DataTable('#example', { ajax: 'data/arrays.txt', deferRender: false });

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.

      Other examples