Buttons example Plug-ins

While it is quite simple to create a custom button with Buttons, if you have a complex button that you wish to reuse the logic from for multiple buttons you may wish to define a plug-in button type. This is simply done by attaching your new button to the $.fn.dataTable.ext.buttons object. Give the button the name that you wish to use to refer to it in the buttons.buttons.extend option. The object assigned should contain whatever parameters you require for your button.

This simple example shows an alert button type being defined which is then used for three different buttons. Each has custom text, but the action method is shared between them.

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

$.fn.dataTable.ext.buttons.alert = { className: 'buttons-alert', action: function ( e, dt, node, config ) { alert( this.text() ); } }; $(document).ready(function() { $('#example').DataTable( { dom: 'Bfrtip', buttons: [ { extend: 'alert', text: 'My button 1' }, { extend: 'alert', text: 'My button 2' }, { extend: 'alert', text: 'My button 3' } ] } ); } );

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.