Typically when working with TableTools, the initialisation and insertion into the DOM will be done automatically by DataTables, through the use of the domDT parameter. However, it is also possible to initialise TableTools manually as shown in the example below using new $.fn.dataTable.TableTools();. The constructor for TableTools takes two parameters:
Once initialised you can insert the TableTools tool bar node anywhere you wish into the DOM using the fnContainer() API method to get the node.
| Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
| Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008/11/28 | $162,700 |
| Angelica Ramos | Chief Executive Officer (CEO) | London | 47 | 2009/10/09 | $1,200,000 |
| Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009/01/12 | $86,000 |
| Bradley Greer | Software Engineer | London | 41 | 2012/10/13 | $132,000 |
| Brenden Wagner | Software Engineer | San Francisco | 28 | 2011/06/07 | $206,850 |
| Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012/12/02 | $372,000 |
| Bruno Nash | Software Engineer | London | 38 | 2011/05/03 | $163,500 |
| Caesar Vance | Pre-Sales Support | New York | 21 | 2011/12/12 | $106,450 |
| Cara Stevens | Sales Assistant | New York | 46 | 2011/12/06 | $145,600 |
| Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012/03/29 | $433,060 |
The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
$(document).ready(function() {
var table = $('#example').DataTable();
var tt = new $.fn.dataTable.TableTools( table, {
sRowSelect: 'single'
} );
$( tt.fnContainer() ).insertAfter('div.info');
} );
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.