Flexible Table Width - DataTables Example

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≡ Show site navigation Flexible table width

Often you may want to have your table resize dynamically with the page. Typically this is done by assigning width:100% in your CSS, but this presents a problem for Javascript since it can be very hard to get that relative size rather than the absolute pixels. As such, if you apply the width attribute to the HTML table tag or inline width style (style="width:100%"), it will be used as the width for the table (overruling any CSS styles).

This example shows a table with width="80%" and the container is also flexible width, so as the window is resized, the table will also resize dynamically.

Name	Position	Office	Age	Start date	Salary
Tiger Nixon	System Architect	Edinburgh	61	2011-04-25	$320,800
Garrett Winters	Accountant	Tokyo	63	2011-07-25	$170,750
Ashton Cox	Junior Technical Author	San Francisco	66	2009-01-12	$86,000
Cedric Kelly	Senior Javascript Developer	Edinburgh	22	2012-03-29	$433,060
Airi Satou	Accountant	Tokyo	33	2008-11-28	$162,700
Brielle Williamson	Integration Specialist	New York	61	2012-12-02	$372,000
Herrod Chandler	Sales Assistant	San Francisco	59	2012-08-06	$137,500
Rhona Davidson	Integration Specialist	Tokyo	55	2010-10-14	$327,900
Colleen Hurst	Javascript Developer	San Francisco	39	2009-09-15	$205,500
Sonya Frost	Software Engineer	Edinburgh	23	2008-12-13	$103,600
Jena Gaines	Office Manager	London	30	2008-12-19	$90,560
Quinn Flynn	Support Lead	Edinburgh	22	2013-03-03	$342,000
Charde Marshall	Regional Director	San Francisco	36	2008-10-16	$470,600
Haley Kennedy	Senior Marketing Designer	London	43	2012-12-18	$313,500
Tatyana Fitzpatrick	Regional Director	London	19	2010-03-17	$385,750
Michael Silva	Marketing Designer	London	66	2012-11-27	$198,500
Paul Byrd	Chief Financial Officer (CFO)	New York	64	2010-06-09	$725,000
Gloria Little	Systems Administrator	New York	59	2009-04-10	$237,500
Bradley Greer	Software Engineer	London	41	2012-10-13	$132,000
Dai Rios	Personnel Lead	Edinburgh	35	2012-09-26	$217,500
Jenette Caldwell	Development Lead	New York	30	2011-09-03	$345,000
Yuri Berry	Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)	New York	40	2009-06-25	$675,000
Caesar Vance	Pre-Sales Support	New York	21	2011-12-12	$106,450
Doris Wilder	Sales Assistant	Sydney	23	2010-09-20	$85,600
Angelica Ramos	Chief Executive Officer (CEO)	London	47	2009-10-09	$1,200,000
Gavin Joyce	Developer	Edinburgh	42	2010-12-22	$92,575
Jennifer Chang	Regional Director	Singapore	28	2010-11-14	$357,650
Brenden Wagner	Software Engineer	San Francisco	28	2011-06-07	$206,850
Fiona Green	Chief Operating Officer (COO)	San Francisco	48	2010-03-11	$850,000
Shou Itou	Regional Marketing	Tokyo	20	2011-08-14	$163,000
Michelle House	Integration Specialist	Sydney	37	2011-06-02	$95,400
Suki Burks	Developer	London	53	2009-10-22	$114,500
Prescott Bartlett	Technical Author	London	27	2011-05-07	$145,000
Gavin Cortez	Team Leader	San Francisco	22	2008-10-26	$235,500
Martena Mccray	Post-Sales support	Edinburgh	46	2011-03-09	$324,050
Unity Butler	Marketing Designer	San Francisco	47	2009-12-09	$85,675
Howard Hatfield	Office Manager	San Francisco	51	2008-12-16	$164,500
Hope Fuentes	Secretary	San Francisco	41	2010-02-12	$109,850
Vivian Harrell	Financial Controller	San Francisco	62	2009-02-14	$452,500
Timothy Mooney	Office Manager	London	37	2008-12-11	$136,200
Jackson Bradshaw	Director	New York	65	2008-09-26	$645,750
Olivia Liang	Support Engineer	Singapore	64	2011-02-03	$234,500
Bruno Nash	Software Engineer	London	38	2011-05-03	$163,500
Sakura Yamamoto	Support Engineer	Tokyo	37	2009-08-19	$139,575
Thor Walton	Developer	New York	61	2013-08-11	$98,540
Finn Camacho	Support Engineer	San Francisco	47	2009-07-07	$87,500
Serge Baldwin	Data Coordinator	Singapore	64	2012-04-09	$138,575
Zenaida Frank	Software Engineer	New York	63	2010-01-04	$125,250
Zorita Serrano	Software Engineer	San Francisco	56	2012-06-01	$115,000
Jennifer Acosta	Junior Javascript Developer	Edinburgh	43	2013-02-01	$75,650
Cara Stevens	Sales Assistant	New York	46	2011-12-06	$145,600
Hermione Butler	Regional Director	London	47	2011-03-21	$356,250
Lael Greer	Systems Administrator	London	21	2009-02-27	$103,500
Jonas Alexander	Developer	San Francisco	30	2010-07-14	$86,500
Shad Decker	Regional Director	Edinburgh	51	2008-11-13	$183,000
Michael Bruce	Javascript Developer	Singapore	29	2011-06-27	$183,000
Donna Snider	Customer Support	New York	27	2011-01-25	$112,000
Name	Position	Office	Age	Start date	Salary

• Javascript
• HTML
• CSS
• Ajax
• Server-side script
• Comments

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

$('#example').DataTable(); new DataTable('#example');

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:

div.container { width: 80%; }

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 processing for this table is shown below. Please note that this is just an example script using PHP. Server-side processing scripts can be written in any language, using the protocol described in the DataTables documentation.

Other examples

Basic initialisation

• Zero configuration
• Feature enable / disable
• Default ordering (sorting)
• Multi-column ordering
• Multiple tables
• Hidden columns
• Complex headers (rowspan and colspan)
• Flexible table width
• State saving
• Alternative pagination
• Data rendering
• Scroll - vertical
• Scroll - vertical, dynamic height
• Scroll - horizontal
• Scroll - horizontal and vertical

Advanced initialisation

• DOM / jQuery events
• DataTables events
• Column rendering
• Enter Key to Search
• Page length options
• Complex headers with column visibility
• Read HTML to data objects
• HTML5 data-* attributes - cell data
• HTML5 data-* attributes - table options
• Setting defaults
• Row created callback
• Row grouping
• Footer callback
• Order direction sequence control
• DOM element return from renderer

Data sources

• HTML (DOM) sourced data
• Ajax sourced data
• Javascript sourced data
• Server-side processing

Language and Internationalisation

• Language - display data type
• Auto-locale display
• Locale based number display
• Language - auto render
• Language options
• Language - Comma decimal place
• Right-to-left language support
• Remote language file
• Remote language file + local definitions

DateTime

• ISO8601 detection
• Auto-locale display (Moment.js)
• Auto-locale display (Luxon)
• Date rendering (Moment.js)
• Date rendering (Luxon)
• Format transform (Moment.js)
• Format transform (Luxon)
• Ordering formatted dates (Moment.js)
• Ordering formatted dates (Luxon)

Plug-ins

• API plug-in methods
• Ordering plug-ins (with type detection)
• Ordering plug-ins (no type detection)
• Custom filtering - range search
• Live DOM ordering

Styling

• Base style
• Base style - no styling classes
• Base style - cell borders
• Base style - compact
• Base style - hover
• Base style - order-column
• Base style - row borders
• Base style - stripe
• Bootstrap 3
• Bootstrap 4
• Bootstrap 5
• Foundation
• Fomantic-UI (formally Semantic-UI)
• Bulma
• jQuery UI ThemeRoller
• Material Design (Tech. preview)
• Tailwind CSS (Tech. preview)
• UIKit 3 (Tech. preview)

Layout

• Table controls positioning
• Table controls positioning with options
• Grid layout
• Element IDs and classes
• Multiple table control elements
• Custom controls - nodes
• Custom controls - defined by functions
• Custom controls - plug-ins
• Legacy dom option

API

• Add rows
• Individual column searching (text inputs)
• Individual column searching (select inputs)
• Highlighting rows and columns
• Child rows (show extra / detailed information)
• Child rows with StateSave
• Row selection (multiple rows)
• Row selection and deletion (single row)
• Form inputs
• Index column
• Show / hide columns dynamically
• Using API in callbacks
• Scrolling and Bootstrap tabs
• Search API (regular expressions)
• HighCharts Integration

Ajax

• Ajax data source (arrays)
• Ajax data source (objects)
• Nested object data (objects)
• Nested object data (arrays)
• Orthogonal data
• Generated content for a column
• Custom data source property
• Flat array data source
• Deferred rendering feature

Server-side

• Server-side processing
• Custom HTTP variables
• POST data
• Return key to search
• Automatic addition of row ID attributes
• Object data source
• Row details
• JSONP data source for remote domains
• Deferred loading of data
• Pipelining data to reduce Ajax calls for paging

DataTables

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