Datatables Rails

Example use in the controller

json = DatatablesRails::Structify.new(User.all)
render :json => json.struct

Example use in the view

DatatablesRails::Out.javascript "datatables", {:process => true, :jqueryui => true, :paginate => true}, "foobar.json", ["edit", "full_name"]

Formatting the result and adding extra things (like links, or formatting currency)

json = DatatablesRails::Structify.new(User.all)
json.formatter do |u|
    u['edit'] = "<a href='#{edit_user_path(u['id'])}'>Edit</a>"
    u['balance'] = number_to_currency(u['balance'])
end

Using server side processing

The best way to do this is just build contiously ontop of an AR relation/object. There might be a more effecient way to do this, but this works. The only assumption is that you're using will_paginate but this could easily be adapated to something else (Like Kaminari).

Fields = ["fields", "you", "want", "to", "display"]
page = 1
page = params[:iDisplayStart].to_i/params[:iDisplayLength].to_i+1 if params[:iDisplayStart]
e = ModelName
total_record_size = 0
display_length = 10
if params[:iDisplayLength].to_i > 10
  display_length = params[:iDisplayLength].to_i
end

if params[:iSortCol_0].to_i != 0
  sort_column = DatatableFields[params[:iSortCol_0].to_i]
  sort_direction = params[:sSortDir_0]
  e = e.order("#{sort_column} #{sort_direction}")
end

if params[:sSearch] != "" && !params[:sSearch].nil?
  search = Fields.collect{|d| "#{d} LIKE '%#{params[:sSearch]}%'" }.compact.join(' OR ')
  e = e.where(search)
  total_record_size = e.count
  e = e.paginate(:page => page, :per_page => display_length)
else
  total_record_size = e.count
  e = e.paginate(:page => page, :per_page => display_length)
end

json = DatatablesRails::Structify.new(e)
json_struct = json.struct
json_struct["iTotalRecords"] = total_record_size
json_struct["iTotalDisplayRecords"] = total_record_size
json_struct["sEcho"] = params[:sEcho]
render :json => json_struct

Building it

gem build datatables_rails.gemspec

Forking it

Feel free to fork this and make any additions, just make sure to run the tests.

You can run all the tests by just calling rake:

rake