postpone table data population

rgavrilov

I have a table placed on a dialog. At page start-up dialog is hidden. There is a chance user will never open it.
When dialog is shown, it also sets default filter settings, depending on how dialog was opened.

Can I initialize dataTable at the page load, but populate it only when dialog is opened?

allan

Where is the data coming from? If it's the DOM then no - it gets rendered when initialised. If from an Ajax source - sure just don't give it any data until you want to display it.

Allan

rgavrilov

I use server side - ajax data source:

bServerSide: true,
sAjaxSource: '../../../../Gems.aspx/Get',
fnServerData: getDataTableServerData,

what do you mean by "dont give it any data"?
I want to prevent table from making a request. So ideally I would use an option "bDontGetDataOnInit" and then trigger data update with "fnGetDataNow" - figuratively speaking.

For now my solution is to not call dataTable function until dialog opened first time and use a global flag "is table initialized".

allan

I was going to suggest your current solution as one of the options - is this not good enough or causing some kind of problem?

Another solution would be to make use of fnServerData to do something like this:

[code]
$(document).ready(function() {
var flagInit = true;

$('#example').dataTable( {
"bProcessing": true,
"bServerSide": true,
"sAjaxSource": "../examples_support/server_processing.php",
"fnServerData": function ( sSource, aoData, fnCallback ) {
if ( flagInit ) {
fnCallback({
fnCallback({
"sEcho": 1,
"iTotalRecords": 0,
"iTotalDisplayRecords": 0,
"aaData": []
});
flagInit = false;
});
} else {
aoData.push( { "name": "more_data", "value": "my_value" } );
fnCallback(json);
}
}
} );
} );
[/code]
Allan

rgavrilov

Global flags are evil. The state of the object shall not be put outside of the object. "Global" flag works, I just was hoping there is a more elegant solution, something like: Init->Load/Refresh

rgavrilov

can I change fnServerData value on the fly? If I can then I can initialize it with:
fnServerData : noResultDummyFunction
and just set it to the correct value when I'm ready to show the table:
$('#table').dataTable().fnSettings().fnServerData = realDataGettingFunction;
will that work?

pdpi

rgavrilov, when you mentioned global flags, did you not notice that flagInit is declared locally in the document ready handler?

The datatables fnServerData callback captures the flag in a closure, but that is not at all accessible from outside the closure, no global flags here at all!

allan

There is another option if you want to avoid the external flag - there is one which is internal to DataTables: oSettings._bInitComplete . This is a private variable (as much as you get in Javascript), so it is possible it will change in future, but it's there at the moment :-)

Allan