Exporting data from a table can often be a key part of a complex application. The Buttons extension for DataTables provides three plug-ins that provide overlapping functionality for data export. You can refer full documentation from here Datatables

Each column has an optional rendering control called columns.render which can be used to process the content of each cell before the data is used. columns.render has a wide array of options available to it for rendering different types of data orthogonally (ordering, searching, display etc), but it can be used very simply to manipulate the content of a cell, as shown here.

Each column has an optional rendering control called columns.render which can be used to process the content of each cell before the data is used. columns.render has a wide array of options available to it for rendering different types of data orthogonally (ordering, searching, display etc), but it can be used very simply to manipulate the content of a cell, as shown here.

In the example below the 'group' is the office location, which is based on the information in the third column (which is set to hidden). The grouping indicator is added by the drawCallback function, which will parse through the rows which are displayed, and enter a grouping TR element where a new group is found. A click event handler is added for the grouping rows to allow the grouping order to be restored as well as ordering by any other column.

As is described by the basic DOM positioning example you can use the dom initialisation parameter to move DataTables features around the table to where you want them.

Events assigned to the table can be exceptionally useful for user interaction, however you must be aware that DataTables will add and remove rows from the DOM as they are needed (i.e. when paging only the visible elements are actually available in the DOM). As such, this can lead to the odd hiccup when working with events.

Complex headers (using colspan / rowspan) can be used to group columns of similar information in DataTables, creating a very powerful visual effect.In addition to the basic behaviour, DataTables can also take colspan and rowspan into account when working with hidden columns. The colspan and rowspan attributes for each cell are automatically calculated and rendered on the page for you. This allows the columns.visible option and column().visible() method to take into account rowspan / colspan cells, drawing the header correctly.

As well as being able to pass language information to DataTables through the language initialisation option, you can also store the language information in a file, which DataTables can load by Ajax using the language.url option.

When working with DataTables over multiple pages it is often useful to set the initialisation defaults to common values (for example you might want to set dom to a common value so all tables get the same layout). This can be done using the $.fn.dataTable.defaults object. This object will take all of the same parameters as the DataTables initialisation object, but in this case you are setting the default for all future initialisations of DataTables.

Through the use of the header and footer callback manipulation functions provided by DataTables headerCallback and footerCallback, it is possible to perform some powerful and useful data manipulation functions, such as summarising data in the table.

The following example shows how a callback function can be used to format a particular row at draw time. For each row that is generated for display, the createdRow function is called once and once only. It is passed the create row node which can then be modified.

DataTables inserts DOM elements around the table to control DataTables features, and you can make use of this mechanism as well to insert your own custom elements. In this example a div with a class of '-string toolbar' is created using dom, and jQuery then used to insert HTML into that element to create the toolbar. You could put whatever HTML you want into the toolbar!