Editor's inline editing abilities are all about rapid editing of the data in the table. This can be further enhanced by using a simple jQuery event listener to listen for the tab key being pressed by the end user, and then skipping on to the next field. This gives the DataTable and editing interface that many users will instantly be familiar with from their spreadsheet applications such as Excel.
In this case, the event listener is used to jump forward to the next field (or to the next row if required), or the previous field if the shift key was being held down by the user when the tab key is pressed (jumping to the previous row if required in this case)
| First name | Last name | Position | Office | Start date | Salary |
|---|
The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:
var editor; // use a global for the submit and return data rendering in the examples
$(document).ready(function() {
editor = new $.fn.dataTable.Editor( {
ajax: "../php/staff.php",
table: "#example",
fields: [ {
label: "First name:",
name: "first_name"
}, {
label: "Last name:",
name: "last_name"
}, {
label: "Position:",
name: "position"
}, {
label: "Office:",
name: "office"
}, {
label: "Extension:",
name: "extn"
}, {
label: "Start date:",
name: "start_date",
type: "date"
}, {
label: "Salary:",
name: "salary"
}
]
} );
editor
.on( 'open', function ( e, type ) {
if ( type === 'inline' ) {
// Listen for a tab key event when inline editing
$(document).on( 'keydown.editor', function ( e ) {
if ( e.keyCode === 9 ) {
e.preventDefault();
// Find the cell that is currently being edited
var cell = $('div.DTE').parent();
if ( e.shiftKey && cell.prev().length && cell.prev().index() !== 0 ) {
// One cell to the left (skipping the first column)
cell.prev().click();
}
else if ( e.shiftKey ) {
// Up to the previous row
cell.parent().prev().children().last(0).click();
}
else if ( cell.next().length ) {
// One cell to the right
cell.next().click();
}
else {
// Down to the next row
cell.parent().next().children().eq(1).click();
}
}
} );
}
} )
.on( 'close', function () {
$(document).off( 'keydown.editor' );
} );
$('#example').on( 'click', 'tbody td:not(:first-child)', function (e) {
editor.inline( this );
} );
var table = $('#example').DataTable( {
dom: "Tfrtip",
ajax: "../php/staff.php",
columns: [
{ data: null, defaultContent: '', orderable: false },
{ data: "first_name" },
{ data: "last_name" },
{ data: "position" },
{ data: "office" },
{ data: "start_date" },
{ data: "salary", render: $.fn.dataTable.render.number( ',', '.', 0, '$' ) }
],
order: [ 1, 'asc' ],
tableTools: {
sRowSelect: "os",
sRowSelector: 'td:first-child',
aButtons: [
{ sExtends: "editor_create", editor: editor },
{ sExtends: "editor_edit", editor: editor },
{ sExtends: "editor_remove", editor: editor }
]
}
} );
} );
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:
table.dataTable tr td:first-child {
text-align: center;
}
table.dataTable tr td:first-child:before {
content: "\f096"; /* fa-square-o */
font-family: FontAwesome;
}
table.dataTable tr.selected td:first-child:before {
content: "\f046"; /* fa-check-square-o */
}
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.