How fnFilter for an empty string?

jadymitchell

I've searched quite a bit on this, with no success. How do I filter for an empty string? This does not work:

oTable.fnFilter( '', 4);

Any help would be appreciated.

28.vivek.s

[code]oTable.fnFilter( ' ', 4);[/code]

Thanks,
Vivek

jadymitchell

Thanks, but I tried that before and it didn't work

My data is a column of dates (e.g.,2/2/2010). If I do

[code]oTable.fnFilter('2/2/2010', 4)[/code]

it filters to that date. But if the date column is empty and I filter for empty, no luck.

allan

Passing a blank string into fnFilter means "no filter". Passing a space in as Vivek suggests will filter on a space. To filter on empty data you need to use a regular expression. fnFilter( '^$', 4, true, false ); should do it.

Allan

jadymitchell

Allan,

I can't thank you enough for your quick response and wonderful project (I will be donating!). However, the regex doesn't seem to work either. Here is a sample of the json I have:

[code]["1525","Kenneth ","Jones","08\/17\/2010","","CRIMINAL","asmith",""],["1511","Don","Hamilton","07\/22\/2010","08\/09\/2010","CRIMINAL","asmith","Nolle Pros"],[/code]

Running this code:

[code]fnFilter( '^$', 4, true, false );[/code]

does not return the first record. Help!

jadymitchell

Sorry! I was missing the name of the table. This:

[code]oTable.fnFilter( '^$', 4, true, false );[/code]

works fine. Thanks!

fbas

Trying to find empty strings.

For whatever reason, reg expressions are not working on my install. Even tried searching .* and got nothing. Is there anything that would disable the reg ex? Text filters work fine, but special chars are not being interpreted as special.

I double checked the database and the values are empty strings, not null. Have banished NULL from those columns.

[code]
oTable.fnFilter(value, get_column_number(colname), true, false);
console.log(colname, '|'+value+'|', get_column_number(colname));
[/code]

allan

.* is going to match everything, so thee won't be any filtering applied.

The code jadymitchell posted looks just fine - can you do something like that:

[code]
oTable.fnFilter( '^$', get_column_number(colname), true, false );
[/code]

That will match empty strings.

Allan

fbas

I see what the problem was: since I'm using server side processing, it's also passing the match criteria to the server. I edited my php server side to check for "^$" and bRegex_# = true and change the LIKE clause to = ''

I was just unclear if the filtering was running locally even if the rest of the processing is server-side.

thanks.

allan

If you are using server-side processing then all of the data processing is done by the server. DataTables in that mode is just a dumb display and event handler. Good to hear you got it sorted.

Allan

fbas

Thanks. I finally got some money deposited into my paypal account this morning and made a small but well-deserved donation.

allan

Thank you :-). It is much appreciated!

Allan