JQuery Datatables Row Data From AJAX Source

Question

In the past I've always used this to get a hidden column's data. I would hide the column with a css class, but the responsive feature doesn't work well with these.

var td = $('td', this);
var ID = $(td[0]).text();

So I found an alternative, by hiding the columns with these classes with the responsive feature.

"columnDefs": [
    //Responsive classes
    { className: 'never', targets: 0 }, //Hide on all devices
    { className: 'all', targets: 1 },   //Show on all devices
]

and then I use either one of these.

var rowData = oTable1.fnGetData(this);
var rowData = oTable1.api().row(this).data();

//Grab the first indexed item in the list
var ID = rowData[0];

That works well if you don't have an AJAX source. It will return a comma separated list of the row data. However, when I try to use this with an AJAX source I just get [object Object] back (instead of a comma separated list) if I output the rowData variable in an alert.

How do I get the row data out of a table with an AJAX source?

Answer 1

It seem to be stored as string so [1, 2, 3] became [object Object] when you turn it into string. Do yourString = yourList.join(',') and store yourString to keep the coma-separated string.

For an object:

yourString = (function () {
  var list = [];
  for(var i in yourList)
    if(yourList.hasOwnProperty(i))
      list.push(yourList[i]);
  return list.join(',');
})();

The function is not needed, it's just to limit the variables scope.

Answer 2

I ended up using an answer I found here. Converting a JS object to an array

I can pull the entire row data from the table with this.

 var rowData = oTable1.api().row(this).data();

In the console log I can see that it returns a javascript object like this.

 Object { id="123456", full_name="Samuel Smith", Last_name="Smith" }

I use this function to convert the object into an array.

var array = $.map(rowData, function (value, index) {
        return [value];
    });

In the console log, my array would appear like this.

["123456", "Samuel Smith", "Smith"]

I can then extract any item from the array like this.

alert(array[0]);

Answer 3

Simplifying madvora's example:

var rowData = oTable1.api().row(this).data().to$();
rowDataArray = rowData.toArray();