When working with large data sets (50'000 rows+), you might find that you want to harness the power of the SQL database on your server, having it perform sorting, filtering and paging for you - tasks which databases are highly tuned for. With a large amount of data on the client-side, the browser can start to slow down, so DataTables has a server-side processing mode which hands off all of the "hard work" to the server. This allows DataTables to display data from results sets which may be many millions of records in size.

The PHP Editor classes have automatic detection of a server-side processing request from DataTables and will automatically process them as required. Thus, to switch your table to server-side processing mode, all you need to do is add bServerSide: true, sServerMethod: 'POST' to your DataTables initialisation, and the server will perform all additional logic for you automatically!

Browser	Rendering engine	Platform(s)	Engine version	CSS grade
Browser	Rendering engine	Platform(s)	Engine version	CSS grade

Initialisation code

The Javascript below is what is used on this page for the example shown.

Table HTML

The HTML shown below shows the TABLE that is used in this example.

Server-side PHP

The code below is that HTML that is used to drive the server-side section of this exampe.

Included media files:

The HTML shown below includes the Javascript and CSS files that are required for the Editor operation on this page. You can use this as a template for your own pages, but if you move the files you might need to update the paths.

Communication of Editor between the client and server:

Editor submits and retrieves information by Ajax requests. The two blocks below show the data that Editor submits and receives, to and from the server. This is updated live as you interact with Editor so you can see what is submitted.

Submitted data:

The following shows the data that has been submitted to the server when a request is made to add, edit or delete data from the table.

// No data yet submitted

Server response:

The following shows the data that has been returned by the server in response to the data submitted on the left and is then acted upon.

// No data yet received

Data for DataTables from server:

DataTables can request information to display from the server when the page first loads. The block below shows the response from the server.