Preamble

Using DataTables in-combination with the excellent jEditable plugin for jQuery allows you to produce a table which can have individual cells edited. The table can then be updated such that filtering, sorting etc. will all work as expected. This is showing in the demo below.

The example shows how a table element can be edited (you could limit to a particular column if you wish using the selector), posted to the server (for saving in a database or whatever) and then placed back into the DataTable. The server's processing in this example simply appends the string '(server updated)' to indicate that something has happened on the server.

Note also that this example makes use of the information in the 'ID' attribute of the TR element. This is useful in order to tell the server what row is being updated - this can readily be expended to include column information as required. Further to this, it is worth noting that to use this type of example with DataTables' server-side processing option, you must use fnDrawCallback to apply the event listeners on each draw.

Live example

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	/* Init DataTables */
	var oTable = $('#example').dataTable();
	
	/* Apply the jEditable handlers to the table */
	$('td', oTable.fnGetNodes()).editable( '../examples_support/editable_ajax.php', {
		"callback": function( sValue, y ) {
			var aPos = oTable.fnGetPosition( this );
			oTable.fnUpdate( sValue, aPos[0], aPos[1] );
		},
		"submitdata": function ( value, settings ) {
			return {
				"row_id": this.parentNode.getAttribute('id'),
				"column": oTable.fnGetPosition( this )[2]
			};
		},
		"height": "14px"
	} );
} );

Other examples

Basic initialisation

• Zero configuration
• Feature enablement
• Sorting data
• Multi-column sorting
• Multiple tables
• Hidden columns
• DOM positioning
• State saving
• Alternative pagination styles
• Scrolling: Horizontal / Vertical / Both / Themed / Infinite
• Change language information (internationalisation)
• ThemeRoller themes (Smoothness)

Advanced initialisation

• Events (pre initialisation)
• Events (post initialisation)
• Column rendering
• Sorting without HTML tags
• Multiple table controls (sDom)
• Defining length menu options
• Custom toolbar (element) around table
• Row highlighting with CSS
• Column grouping through col/row spans
• Row grouping
• Row callback
• Footer callback
• Change language information from a file (internationalisation)

Data sources

• DOM
• Javascript array
• Ajax source
• Server side processing

Server-side processing

• Obtain server-side data
• Add extra HTTP variables
• Use HTTP POST
• Custom column ordering (in callback data)
• Pipelining data (reduce Ajax calls for paging)
• Show and hide details about a particular record
• User selectable rows (multiple rows)

API

• Dynamically add a new row
• Individual column filtering (using "input" elements)
• Individual column filtering (using "select" elements)
• Highlight rows and columns
• Show and hide details about a particular record
• User selectable rows (multiple rows)
• User selectable rows (single row) and delete rows
• Editable rows (with jEditable)
• Submit form with elements in table
• Index column (static number column)
• Show and hide columns dynamically
• API function use in initialisation object (callback)
• DataTables scrolling and tabs
• Regular expression filtering

Plug-ins

• Add custom API functions
• Sorting and type detection
• Custom pagination controls
• Range filtering / custom filtering
• Live DOM sorting
• Automatic HTML type detection

Please refer to the DataTables documentation for full information about its API properties and methods.