Introducing SearchBuilder
SearchBuilder is a new extension for DataTables that allows the end user to apply advanced filtering to your tables. In a step up in complexity from SearchPanes, SearchBuilder allows for filtering on columns using a wide variety of conditions, rather than just exact matches. Conditions can be grouped together to create complex filters that are seamlessly applied to the table. SearchBuilder is therefore a very effective way of narrowing down results using complex conditions across multiple columns at a time.
You can see an example below - click the Add Condition button to get started building your own filter:
| Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiger Nixon | System Architect | Edinburgh | 61 | 2011-04-25 | $320,800 |
| Garrett Winters | Accountant | Tokyo | 63 | 2011-07-25 | $170,750 |
| Ashton Cox | Junior Technical Author | San Francisco | 66 | 2009-01-12 | $86,000 |
| Cedric Kelly | Senior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 22 | 2012-03-29 | $433,060 |
| Airi Satou | Accountant | Tokyo | 33 | 2008-11-28 | $162,700 |
| Brielle Williamson | Integration Specialist | New York | 61 | 2012-12-02 | $372,000 |
| Herrod Chandler | Sales Assistant | San Francisco | 59 | 2012-08-06 | $137,500 |
| Rhona Davidson | Integration Specialist | Tokyo | 55 | 2010-10-14 | $327,900 |
| Colleen Hurst | Javascript Developer | San Francisco | 39 | 2009-09-15 | $205,500 |
| Sonya Frost | Software Engineer | Edinburgh | 23 | 2008-12-13 | $103,600 |
| Jena Gaines | Office Manager | London | 30 | 2008-12-19 | $90,560 |
| Quinn Flynn | Support Lead | Edinburgh | 22 | 2013-03-03 | $342,000 |
| Charde Marshall | Regional Director | San Francisco | 36 | 2008-10-16 | $470,600 |
| Haley Kennedy | Senior Marketing Designer | London | 43 | 2012-12-18 | $313,500 |
| Tatyana Fitzpatrick | Regional Director | London | 19 | 2010-03-17 | $385,750 |
| Michael Silva | Marketing Designer | London | 66 | 2012-11-27 | $198,500 |
| Paul Byrd | Chief Financial Officer (CFO) | New York | 64 | 2010-06-09 | $725,000 |
| Gloria Little | Systems Administrator | New York | 59 | 2009-04-10 | $237,500 |
| Bradley Greer | Software Engineer | London | 41 | 2012-10-13 | $132,000 |
| Dai Rios | Personnel Lead | Edinburgh | 35 | 2012-09-26 | $217,500 |
| Jenette Caldwell | Development Lead | New York | 30 | 2011-09-03 | $345,000 |
| Yuri Berry | Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) | New York | 40 | 2009-06-25 | $675,000 |
| Caesar Vance | Pre-Sales Support | New York | 21 | 2011-12-12 | $106,450 |
| Doris Wilder | Sales Assistant | Sydney | 23 | 2010-09-20 | $85,600 |
| Angelica Ramos | Chief Executive Officer (CEO) | London | 47 | 2009-10-09 | $1,200,000 |
| Gavin Joyce | Developer | Edinburgh | 42 | 2010-12-22 | $92,575 |
| Jennifer Chang | Regional Director | Singapore | 28 | 2010-11-14 | $357,650 |
| Brenden Wagner | Software Engineer | San Francisco | 28 | 2011-06-07 | $206,850 |
| Fiona Green | Chief Operating Officer (COO) | San Francisco | 48 | 2010-03-11 | $850,000 |
| Shou Itou | Regional Marketing | Tokyo | 20 | 2011-08-14 | $163,000 |
| Michelle House | Integration Specialist | Sydney | 37 | 2011-06-02 | $95,400 |
| Suki Burks | Developer | London | 53 | 2009-10-22 | $114,500 |
| Prescott Bartlett | Technical Author | London | 27 | 2011-05-07 | $145,000 |
| Gavin Cortez | Team Leader | San Francisco | 22 | 2008-10-26 | $235,500 |
| Martena Mccray | Post-Sales support | Edinburgh | 46 | 2011-03-09 | $324,050 |
| Unity Butler | Marketing Designer | San Francisco | 47 | 2009-12-09 | $85,675 |
| Howard Hatfield | Office Manager | San Francisco | 51 | 2008-12-16 | $164,500 |
| Hope Fuentes | Secretary | San Francisco | 41 | 2010-02-12 | $109,850 |
| Vivian Harrell | Financial Controller | San Francisco | 62 | 2009-02-14 | $452,500 |
| Timothy Mooney | Office Manager | London | 37 | 2008-12-11 | $136,200 |
| Jackson Bradshaw | Director | New York | 65 | 2008-09-26 | $645,750 |
| Olivia Liang | Support Engineer | Singapore | 64 | 2011-02-03 | $234,500 |
| Bruno Nash | Software Engineer | London | 38 | 2011-05-03 | $163,500 |
| Sakura Yamamoto | Support Engineer | Tokyo | 37 | 2009-08-19 | $139,575 |
| Thor Walton | Developer | New York | 61 | 2013-08-11 | $98,540 |
| Finn Camacho | Support Engineer | San Francisco | 47 | 2009-07-07 | $87,500 |
| Serge Baldwin | Data Coordinator | Singapore | 64 | 2012-04-09 | $138,575 |
| Zenaida Frank | Software Engineer | New York | 63 | 2010-01-04 | $125,250 |
| Zorita Serrano | Software Engineer | San Francisco | 56 | 2012-06-01 | $115,000 |
| Jennifer Acosta | Junior Javascript Developer | Edinburgh | 43 | 2013-02-01 | $75,650 |
| Cara Stevens | Sales Assistant | New York | 46 | 2011-12-06 | $145,600 |
| Hermione Butler | Regional Director | London | 47 | 2011-03-21 | $356,250 |
| Lael Greer | Systems Administrator | London | 21 | 2009-02-27 | $103,500 |
| Jonas Alexander | Developer | San Francisco | 30 | 2010-07-14 | $86,500 |
| Shad Decker | Regional Director | Edinburgh | 51 | 2008-11-13 | $183,000 |
| Michael Bruce | Javascript Developer | Singapore | 29 | 2011-06-27 | $183,000 |
| Donna Snider | Customer Support | New York | 27 | 2011-01-25 | $112,000 |
| Name | Position | Office | Age | Start date | Salary |
Download
The SearchBuilder extension is available on the DataTables CDN using our download builder and direct access from our CDN (links below). If you prefer to use a package manager You can also install it from NPM, NuGET and Composer.
Features
The arrival of SearchBuilder brings a completely new way of applying complex filtering to DataTables. At its core, it is an interface that will allow users to quickly filter tables based on criteria that they set. On initialisation SearchBuilder analyses the DataTable and extracts the columns along with their data type. Once a column has been selected, the condition select is populated with all of the available conditions for that column, these change depending on the data type. The default is for SearchBuilder to allow for filtering on all of the columns, but this is of course configurable using the searchBuilder.columns option. Once a column has been selected, the relevant conditions are made available within the condition select element. Another selection here displays the relevant input method for collecting the value to filter against for this condition, be that a select or an input. For the likes of the empty condition, no extra value is required, so no input method is made available.
Each "Criteria" is able to be placed in a group. Groupings allow for the logic type to be set. For example you may want the filtered rows to satisfy conditions X and Y, or just condition Z. Groups and sub groups make this possible. There is no limit on the number of conditions, groups, sub groups or depth in SearchBuilder. This means that you really can create search criteria that are as complex as you desire.
SearchBuilder has been constructed with customisation in mind. We're very aware that many of you will want to add your own conditions, or modify the existing ones to be tailored to your needs. Full documentation for how to add your own conditions is available in the docs.
Usage
Beyond the core set of features and the custom conditions configuration options, there are a handful of config options for SearchBuilder. These include setting depth limits, default logic for groups and pre-defined criteria. There is also a quick option to greyscale the colours in SearchBuilder if you are looking for a more subtle styling approach. As always though, it is possible to add your own styling to SearchBuilder.
Layout
SearchBuilder is inserted into the page using the searchBuilder feature with the layout option as shown below:
$('#myTable').DataTable({
layout: {
top1: 'searchBuilder'
}
dom: 'Qlfrtip'
});
If you are using a legacy version of DataTables 1.x, the insert point is done with the dom option of DataTables. The Q option tells DataTables where to show SearchBuilder - e.g.:
$('#myTable').DataTable({
dom: 'Qlfrtip'
});
For styling libraries such as Bootstrap and Semnatic UI, you might find it easier to use the searchBuilder.container() method to get the SearchBuilder DOM element, and insert it directly into the document - e.g.:
var table = $('#example').DataTable({
searchBuilder: true
});
table.searchBuilder.container().prependTo(table.table().container());
SearchBuilder is set to responsively adjust its layout based on the width of the screen, removing the need for extra work by developers.
Future Work
As was the case with SearchPanes' initial release, server-side processing is not available in this 1.0.0 release either. We are going to be looking at adding this ability in future, also noting that SearchBuilder's speed is already a lot faster than SearchPanes' when handling large datasets on the client-side.
While this is only a 1.0.0 release, there has been a large amount of work and testing over the last few months to ensure that SearchBuilder is a strong extension which is ready for use in production environments.
I hope that SearchBuilder can bring some improvement to your projects and as always we would encourage you to provide any feedback that you may have on this initial release of SearchBuilder in the forums, as well as any other features that you think would benefit the extension in the future!