DataTable - Serverside - sort columns initialisation - datatable

Question

I have 6 datatables with one datatable configuration on a page with a basic layout as follows for all five tables:
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>COL_1</th>
<th>COL_2</th>
<th>COL_1</th>
<th>COL_1</th>
<th>COL_1</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
and my datatable configuration options is as below:
{
order: [[5, "desc"], [2, "asc"]]
.......
}
My issue is I need to order by columns by table. For example, in table 1, I would like to order columns 1 and 4 for second table on columns 3 and 4 and third on columns 0 and 3 etc., Is there a way to do that without having six different configurations for each datatable?

Answer 1

You can parameterize the DataTable initialization code - to a certain extent.
As an example, assume the following three simple tables:
$('#example1').DataTable( {
"paging": true,
"order": [[5, desc"], [2, "asc"]]
} );
$('#example2').DataTable( {
"paging": true,
"order": [[2, "asc"], [3, "asc"]]
} );
$('#example3').DataTable( {
"paging": true,
"order": [[4, "asc"], [2, "desc"]]
} );
The only parts which differ from table to table are:
the table name
the default sort order
We can extract these differences into a JavaScript object and then iterate over it as follows:
var configs = [
{
tableName: 'example1',
order: [[5, "desc"], [2, "asc"]]
},
{
tableName: 'example2',
order: [[2, "asc"], [3, "asc"]]
},
{
tableName: 'example3',
order: [[4, "asc"], [2, "desc"]]
}
];
configs.forEach( function ( config ) {
console.log(config.tableName);
$('#' + config.tableName).DataTable( {
"paging": true,
"order": config.order
} );
} );
The end result is the same as the three separate table definitions.
You can, of course add more data to the config object, such as a source URL, and so on. There may be some configuration items which cannot be handled in this way - for example, nested functions. It depends on how complex you need your table initialization to be.
It's a judgement call as to whether this is worth doing, in your case. There is a loss of readability, which needs to be considered.