Preamble

The highlighting of rows and columns have be quite useful for attracting attention to where the user's cursor is in the data array. Of course the highlighting of a row is easy enough using CSS, but for column highlighting, you need to use a little bit of Javascript. This example shows that in action on a DataTables enhanced table - this type of effect would be particularly effective on tables with dense information.

Live example

Initialisation code

$(document).ready(function() {
	var oTable = $('#example').dataTable( {
		"bSortClasses": false
	} );
	
	$('td', oTable.fnGetNodes()).hover( function() {
		var iCol = $('td').index(this) % 5;
		var nTrs = oTable.fnGetNodes();
		$('td:nth-child('+(iCol+1)+')', nTrs).addClass( 'highlighted' );
	}, function() {
		$('td.highlighted', oTable.fnGetNodes()).removeClass('highlighted');
	} );
} );

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.