Details panel below table

beedrew

Hi Everyone,

First, thanks so much for this amazing plug-in. I think it's going to let me publish a site I've wanted to do for years and years (and this time I am REALLY going to get it going!). I am just a hobbyist, so I apologize for the newbie nature of my questions.

Anyway. I've got my table working and even got column filtering on board. Now I want to do something like the URL below, but my data is coming from the server:

http://www.datatables.net/examples/api/row_details.html

A few questions:

1. Let's say I want to display 5 columns in my table and display 3 pieces of additional data in my drill-down row. Is it true that my .php processing file needs to load all 8 pieces of data?

2. If #1 is true, then do I need to hide the 3 columns when I build the initial table?

3. What if instead of displaying the extra information inside a drill-down row, I wanted to put it in a panel BELOW the table. Is this possible.

Thanks again everyone, especially Allan. When I get my table running 100%, I am "donating" some beer to Allan and some wine to myself!

Bee

allan

> 1. Is it true that my .php processing file needs to load all 8 pieces of data?

No - you can get the additional data by making an additional Ajax request if you want. Generally I would say if the data is small enough to return with the rest of it, the it would make sense to do so, but you can get the data from anywhere you want.

> 2. If #1 is true, then do I need to hide the 3 columns when I build the initial table?

No - Use mDataProp to use objects with DataTables - see: http://datatables.net/blog/Extended_data_source_options_with_DataTables

> 3. What if instead of displaying the extra information inside a drill-down row, I wanted to put it in a panel BELOW the table. Is this possible.

Sure - just use standard jQuery / DOM methods to put the data wherever you want :-).

Regards,
Allan