Tag - single with Ajax search

The autocomplete aspect of tags proves its worth when you are working with a large number of options. In such cases you might wish to make Ajax requests to the server as the user is typing to get suitable options (this can help improve start up times when particularly large data sets are used).

In this example Ajax requests for the options are sent as you type into the Country search box.

Note that multiple is set to false for the field, since we are representing a single value in the join. Also, the ajax option is simply set to true which means it will inherit the ajax value from the Editor initialisation - the server-side libraries for Editor have automatic support for tags Ajax search through the Options class. Refer to the server-side documentation for full details. Finally, it is worth noting that the server-side will resolve the Continent automatically based on joined data.

Name	Continent	Country
Name	Continent	Country

Javascript
HTML
CSS
Ajax
Server-side script
Comments

The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:

var editor = new DataTable.Editor({
	ajax: '../php/tagsSingleAjax.php',
	fields: [
		{
			label: 'Name:',
			name: 'team.name'
		},
		{
			label: 'Country:',
			name: 'team.country',
			type: 'tags',
			multiple: false,
			ajax: true
		}
	],
	table: '#example'
});

$('#example').DataTable({
	ajax: {
		url: '../php/tagsSingleAjax.php',
		type: 'POST'
	},
	columns: [
		{ data: 'team.name' },
		{ data: 'continent.name' },
		{ data: 'country.name' }
	],
	layout: {
		topStart: {
			buttons: [
				{ extend: 'create', editor: editor },
				{ extend: 'edit', editor: editor },
				{ extend: 'remove', editor: editor }
			]
		}
	},
	select: true
});

const editor = new DataTable.Editor({
	ajax: '../php/tagsSingleAjax.php',
	fields: [
		{
			label: 'Name:',
			name: 'team.name'
		},
		{
			label: 'Country:',
			name: 'team.country',
			type: 'tags',
			multiple: false,
			ajax: true
		}
	],
	table: '#example'
});

new DataTable('#example', {
	ajax: {
		url: '../php/tagsSingleAjax.php',
		type: 'POST'
	},
	columns: [
		{ data: 'team.name' },
		{ data: 'continent.name' },
		{ data: 'country.name' }
	],
	layout: {
		topStart: {
			buttons: [
				{ extend: 'create', editor: editor },
				{ extend: 'edit', editor: editor },
				{ extend: 'remove', editor: editor }
			]
		}
	},
	select: true
});

In addition to the above code, the following Javascript library files are loaded for use in this example:

The HTML shown below is the raw HTML table element, before it has been enhanced by DataTables:

This example uses a little bit of additional CSS beyond what is loaded from the library files (below), in order to correctly display the table. The additional CSS used is shown below:

The following CSS library files are loaded for use in this example to provide the styling of the table:

This table loads data by Ajax. The latest data that has been loaded is shown below. This data will update automatically as any additional data is loaded.

The script used to perform the server-side interaction for this demo is shown below. This server uses PHP, so the PHP script is shown, however our download packages include the equivalent script for other platforms, including .NET and Node.js. Server-side scripts can be written in any language, using the protocol described in the Editor documentation.

Tag - single with Ajax search

Other examples

Simple initialisation

Advanced initialisation

Triggering editing

DataTables as an input

Dates and time

Dropdown input types

DataTables extensions

Inline editing

Bubble editing

API

Standalone

Styling

Plug-ins

DataTables