使用MySQL填充jQuery DataTable

Question

I am attempting to populate a jQuery DataTable with information from a MySQL database without using AJAX. I would prefer to just use simpler code because this project is meant to be as minimal as possible. The following code is before the start of my HTML markup:

<?php
    //Connect to the MySQL database
    $usernameMain = "username"; 
    $passwordMain = "password"; 
    $hostMain = "host"; 
    $dbnameMain = "database";
    $optionsMain = array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES utf8'); 
    $dbMain = new PDO("mysql:host={$hostMain};dbname={$dbnameMain};charset=utf8", $usernameMain, $passwordMain, $optionsMain);

    $sql = 'SELECT  name,date,location,entity,type FROM `events`';
    $result = $dbMain->query($sql);

?>

I have generated a connection to my database (I removed my details), and also ensured to import the script files for jQuery DataTables as well.

Lower down in my HTML document, I created a table and attempted to echo out this database information with a while loop:

<table class="table table-hover table-nomargin table-bordered usertable"
    id="datatables">
        <thead>
            <tr class='thefilter'>
                <th class='with-checkbox'></th>
                <th>Name</th>
                <th>Location</th>
                <th>Type</th>
                <th>Date</th>
                <th>Entity</th>
                <th>Options</th>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <th class='with-checkbox'><input id="check_all" name=
                "check_all" type="checkbox"></th>
                <th>Name</th>
                <th>Location</th>
                <th>Date</th>
                <th>Type</th>
                <th>Sponsoring Entity</th>
                <th>Options</th>
            </tr>
        </thead>

        <tbody>
            <!--Gather Rows from Database-->
            <?php
             $row = mysqli_fetch_array($result);
              while ($row)     {
             ?>

            <tr>
                <td class="with-checkbox"><input name="check" type="checkbox"
                value="1"></td>
                <td><?php echo $row['name']; ?></td>
                <td><?php echo $row['date']; ?></td>
                <td><?php echo $row['location']; ?></td>
                <td><?php echo $row['entity']; ?></td>
                <td><?php echo $row['type']; ?></td>
                <td>
                    <a class="btn icon-pencil" href="#" rel="tooltip" style=
                    "font-style: italic" title="Edit"></a> <a class=
                    "btn icon-plus-sign" href="#" rel="tooltip" style=
                    "font-style: italic" title="Enter Attendance"></a>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <?php
             }
            ?>
        </tbody>
    </table>

Then after this table was created, I inserted the following Javascript code to initialize the table as a DataTable with jQuery:

<script type="text/javascript">
(document).ready(function() {
    $('#datatables').dataTable( {
    } );
 );
</script>

I do not have appropriate reputation to upload images, so I have created an Imgur album with the database setup of my website and the error I get with the HTML page here: https://imgur.com/a/vacA4

I am not sure if the issue is database connection, DataTables, or something else. I have spent a lot of time on this issue and keep hitting roadblocks. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Answer 1

You could just use the data option for dataTable, and feed the php data structure through the json_encode

dataTable({
  ...
  data: <?phpecho json_encode($data_prepared_from_db); ?>
})