Datatables,Export to excel with dropdown values

Question

Tried to export but getting all options in excel file. is there any way to get only selected items instead of all dropdown options?

$('#example').DataTable( {
        dom: 'Bfrtip',
        columns: [
            { data: 'name' },
            { data: 'surname' },
            { data: 'position' },
            { data: 'office' },
            { data: 'salary' }
        ],
        buttons: [         
            {
                extend: 'excelHtml5',
                exportOptions: { orthogonal: 'export' }
            }
        ]
    } );

Fiddle

Answer 1

You can use the following export options:

exportOptions: {
  format: {
    body: function ( inner, rowidx, colidx, node ) {
      if ($(node).children("select").length > 0) {
        // we are in a cell containing a "select" drop-down - so, get it:
        var selectNode = node.firstElementChild;
        var txt = selectNode.options[selectNode.selectedIndex].value;
        //var txt = selectNode.options[selectNode.selectedIndex].text;
        return txt;
      } else {
        return inner; // the standard cell contents
      }
    }
  }
}

This uses JavaScript to manipulate the node provided by the body function.

In this specific case, it returns the value associated with the selected drop-down option. So, for example, if you have this:

<option value="some_value">Some Value</option>

then the spreadsheet will contain "some_value" and not "Some Value".

If you want the displayed text ("Some Value"), then use the commented-out line in the above code instead. But in that case you would need some extra logic to replace the placeholder text "Select Report" with a blank string.

---

For some reason, I was not able to use a jQuery selector here. I wanted to use option:selected but I was not able to get that to work - not sure why. But the pure JavaScript approach (above) did work.