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Karl edited this page Sep 3, 2017 · 26 revisions

ajax

Type: {String|Object}

Default: undefined

Load remote data.

The easiest method is to just pass the url to the remote data (JSON) and the instance will process and insert the data.

var dataTable = new DataTable(myTable, {
    ajax: "some/url/data.json"
});

If you need to manually process the data or you're importing anything other than json then you can also pass an Object with the url, content and load properties:

var dataTable = new DataTable(myTable, {
    ajax: {
        url: "some/url/data.txt", // url to remote data
        content: {
            type: "csv", // specify the content
        },
        load: function(xhr) {
            // process and return the response data
        }
    }
});

Under the hood, the ajax option uses the import() method to insert the new data. Thus, the same optional properties that that method takes can also be passed to the content property:

var dataTable = new DataTable(myTable, {
    ajax: {
        url: "some/url/data.txt", // url to remote data
        content: {
            type: "csv", // specify the content,
            headings: true,
            lineDelimiter: "\n",
            columnDelimiter: ","
        },
        load: function(xhr) {
            // process and return the response data
        }
    }
});

---

The load property should return the formatted response data that the instance can recognise (`Object`, `JSON` or `CSV`). It takes a single argument which is an instance of the `XMLHttpRequest` object.

If your function returns an `Object` it should formatted so that the [`insert()`](https://github.com/Mobius1/Vanilla-DataTables/wiki/API#insertdata-object) method can use it.

### Example

[See it in action.](https://codepen.io/Mobius1/pen/WEOxxq/?editors=0010)

`JSON` string returned by `xhr.responseText`:
```javascript
[
    {
        "Name": "Unity Pugh",
        "Ext.": "9958",
        "City": "Curicó",
        "Start Date": "2005/02/11",
        "Completion": "37%"
    },
    {
        "Name": "Theodore Duran",
        "Ext.": "8971",
        "City": "Dhanbad",
        "Start Date": "1999/04/07",
        "Completion": "97%"
    },
    ...
]
var highlightNumbers = function(xhr) {
    // Parse the JSON string
    var data = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);

    // Loop over the data and style any columns with numbers
    for ( var i = 0; i < data.length; i++ ) {
        for (var p in data[i]) {
            if ( !isNaN(data[i][p]) ) {
                data[i][p] = "<u style='color:red;'>" + data[i][p] + "</u>"
            }
        } 
    }		
		
    // Return the formatted data	
    return JSON.stringify(data);
}

var dataTable = new DataTable(myTable, {
    ajax: {
        url: "some/url/data.json",
        load: highlightNumbers
    }
});
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