Datatable Pagination, Sorting and Search – Server Side (PHP/MySQl) Using Ajax

Last Updated: | By: PHPFlow Team

The Datatable 1.10.9 has been released now, Datatable is the most popular grid plugin in web development. The main benefit of Datatable is the open source and light-weighted jquery plugin. You can use this plugin with other CSS frameworks like bootstrap and foundation. There are a lot of datatable plugins are available which useful to improve UI experience.

I got huge response from reader on previous datatable tutorial which was DataTables Example – Server-side Processing with PHP.I have used JSON data in code instead of fetch data from the MySQL database, So I have got many requests to share code with PHP, MySQL using ajax.

Also Checkout other tutorial of Datatable,

Video Tutorial:

If you are more comfortable in watching a video that explains about Datatable Pagination, Sorting and Search – Server Side(PHP) Using Ajax, then you should watch this video tutorial.

Datatable Server Side Integration Using PHP

There are following files are participate in this Datatble tutorial:

Index.php - This file will responsible to create html and instance datatable using jquery code.
response.php - This file responsible to create database connection string and convert records into json string and returns data to Ajax method as response.
connection.php - This file responsible to create mysql database connection.

Datatable Example with PHP,MySql server side Using Ajax

We will create simple PHP application to fecth data from server using PHP.The php is using mysql to store and fetch data.

The jQuery datatable help to display records into html page with pagination sorting and searching feature.

How To Create MySQL Database Connection Using mysql_connect

We will Create db_connect.php file into root of the project path, Now we will put the below connection code in this file.

$dbhost = 'localhost';  
$dbuser = 'root';  
$dbpass = "";  
$conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die ('Error connecting to mysql');  
$dbname = 'test';  
$connection = mysql_select_db($dbname);

Step 1: we will include jquery datatable and jquery library.

	
	 
	<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.datatables.net/r/dt/dt-1.10.9/datatables.min.js"></script>

	<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf8" src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.8.2.min.js"></script>

Step 2: Create HTML layout in your web page (index.php).

<div class="container">
<div class="">
<h1>Data Table</h1>
<div class="">
<table id="employee_grid" class="display" width="100%" cellspacing="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Empid</th>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Salary</th>
<th>Age</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<th>Empid</th>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Salary</th>
<th>Age</th>
</tr>
</tfoot>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Step 3: Instantiate datatable object on table(index.php).

$( document ).ready(function() {
	$('#employee_grid').DataTable({
		 "bProcessing": true,
         "serverSide": true,
         "ajax":{
            url :"response.php", // json datasource
            type: "post",  // type of method  , by default would be get
            error: function(){  // error handling code
              $("#employee_grid_processing").css("display","none");
            }
          }
        });   
});

Above code – We have applied datatable on employee_grid table.The serverSide have the rest url path which will use to get data from backend server.

Step 4: Include connection file into top of the response.php file.

	//include connection file 
	include_once("db_connect.php");

Step 5: Using parameters to create sql.

  • $params[‘order’] : This array contains order information of clicked column
  • $params[‘search’] : This array contains serach value information datatable
  • $params[‘start’] : start limit of data
  • $params[‘length’] : end limit of data
$sql = "SELECT * FROM `employee` ORDER BY id  asc LIMIT ".$params['start']." ,".$params['length']." ";

Step 6: Send json data to the index.php file.

	$json_data = array(
			"draw"            => intval( $params['draw'] ),   
			"recordsTotal"    => intval( $totalRecords ),  
			"recordsFiltered" => intval($totalRecords),
			"data"            => $data   // total data array
			);

You can download source code and Demo from below link.

  Live Demo
 Download Source Code

71 thoughts on “Datatable Pagination, Sorting and Search – Server Side (PHP/MySQl) Using Ajax”

  1. Hi Parvez,

    Thanks for this wonderful post.

    I followed your tutorial in one of my project. Its working fine, just for 2 things I need your help. (1) The search is not functioning. And (2) I want to add a hyperlink to a field. On clicking it, the details view page of the record will be displayed. I don’t know how to acomplish this. I have tried some code which creates the desired hyperlink but the url valiable is not passed. Even the text of hyperlink is displaying “Undefined”. If you need to see my code,

    Can you suggest me what’s wrong?

    Reply

      • sorry, the code is there but the hyperlink at phpflow is appending “)”. Just remove the last “)” in the url and check it. Thank you for your prompt response.

        Reply

        • This is code to add hyperlink in datatable cell,

          “serverSide”: true,
          “aoColumnDefs”: [
          {
          “aTargets”:[1],

          “mData”: null,
          “mRender”: function( data, type, full) {
          console.log(data);
          return +data[1];
          }
          }
          ],
          “ajax”:{
          url :”response.php”, // json datasource
          type: “post”, // type of method , by default would be get
          error: function(){ // error handling code
          $(“#employee_grid_processing”).css(“display”,”none”);
          }
          }

          Reply

    • Hi kamlesh
      Thank you very much.
      By this project “Datatable CRUD Operation Using Ajax with Bootstrap 5, PHP and MySQL” I have always this warning:
      DataTables warning: table id=dt-employee – Invalid JSON response. For more information about this error, please see http://datatables.net/tn/1
      Can you help me?

      Reply

  2. Hi,
    Thanks a lot for this tutorial, it really help me.

    i need help in something .. i have a DATE as a fields so how i can arrange your code to make the sorting works.

    thks again.

    Reply

  3. Hello.
    I’m new to AJAX and libraries in general when it comes to web development, so I have a few questions.
    Let me start off with telling you that I have a CSGO server up and running, and I want to display data to my visitors from this database. Configuring the connection and SQL queries was ok, but now I’ve run into some problems.

    1. I want to display a column “Rank”, which is not in the database, but given to the players depending on their ‘score’. EG: The player with the highest score gets rank 1, second highest rank 2 etc.
    With PHP this was easy enough, I just set the $rank to $totalPages * $perPage and incremented the $rank per row. But so far I havent figured out how to do this in AJAX.

    2. In my database I can see kills, deaths, shots, hits and headshots. I want to display to my visitors the amount of % headshots and their kill/death-ratio. Do you have any idea how to make this query with AJAX, and also how to add an extra column to display this? Thus far I just get errors when adding more columns than expected.

    Thank you so much for the code and continously help. It is very appreciated!

    EDIT: I forgot to ask about the ORDER BY. I can see that this is set to order the first column by an ascending order. Is there any way to customize this? I would like to have it to order by score in an descending order instead!
    Again, thank you so much for your help!

    Reply

  4. As per my understanding about your questions,
    You can do same thing using mysql script very easily or you can create mysql views and get records from mysql views instead of table.

    ORDER BY – You can set using data table parameter,

    Reply

  5. Hello,
    Please how do i make one of the fiels clickable say the name field so that user can click to open or download a file

    Reply

  6. Hello,
    Thanks for sharing this nice article , I would like to know how i send data (as object) to the server side , for example i would like to send employee data (first name,last name..ect ) and do the search at the database based on this values .
    Here is my code but it doesn’t work for me

    function SearchEmps(empData) { // javaScript object with employee data(first name,last name..ect )
    var DTO = { ’empData’: empData };
    $(‘#employee_grid’).DataTable({
    “bProcessing”: true,
    “serverSide”: true,
    “ajax”:{
    url :”response.php”, // json datasource
    type: “post”, // type of method , by default would be get
    data: JSON.stringify(DTO),
    error: function(){ // error handling code
    $(“#employee_grid_processing”).css(“display”,”none”);
    }
    });
    }

    // Server side Get data and perform search….

    Reply

    • this is sample code to send custom parameters to serverside datatable:
      var data = { ‘name’: ‘parvez’, ‘lname’:’alam’};
      $(‘#employee_grid’).DataTable({
      “bProcessing”: true,
      “serverSide”: true,
      “responsive”: true,
      “ajax”:{
      url :”response.php”, // json datasource
      type: “post”, // type of method ,GET/POST/DELETE
      error: function(){
      $(“#employee_grid_processing”).css(“display”,”none”);
      },
      “data”: function ( d ) {
      d.cParms = data;
      }
      }
      });

      Reply

  8. Thankx its work fine,
    but i have some queries,

    I need to put tag in b’coz i want to show image in table from database.
    I also need a link for some action like Update & Delete.

    please help me to solve out this.

    Thank You.

    Reply

  11. How to search data using multiple column or individual column server side and also wildcard search…..

    Reply

  13. if link is dynamic then you need to parse data as like this tutorial ‘https://phpflow.com/php/parse-json-data-jquery-datatable/’ and if static then you can pass a constant.

    Reply

  14. i have 20 fileds and i just want to get the filed 1,2,4,8 and 20 filed records…how can i do that.,.please help.. thanks in advance phpflow.

    Reply

  15. in js side,
    You need to unset those index fields in ajax
    “dataSrc”: function (jsonData) {
    for ( var i=0, len=jsonData.data.length ; i<len ; i++ ) {
    delete(jsonData.data)
    jsonData.splice( i, 1 );
    }

    Server side:
    You can send response of those col values/index which u need to show in table

    Reply

    • thats a lot of work for a server especially if you have a large db. as it stands you have set the query to search the whole db by using the * (search all). to make life simpler not only for yourself but also for the server just search columns that you choose in the query. My code is slightly different because my db name is not the same as yours and neither are my column names but take a look at the code i have edited in response.php. //define index of column
      $columns = array(
      0 =>’memberID’,
      1 =>’username’,
      2 => ‘urank’,
      3 => ‘gender’,
      4 =>’datejoined’,
      5 =>’lastseen’,
      6 => ‘country’

      );

      $where = $sqlTot = $sqlRec = “”;

      // check search value exist
      if( !empty($params[‘search’][‘value’]) ) {
      $where .=” WHERE “;
      $where .=” ( memberID LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ “;
      $where .=” OR username LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ “;
      $where .=” OR urank LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ “;
      $where .=” OR gender LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ “;
      $where .=” OR datejoined LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ “;
      $where .=” OR lastseen LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ “;
      $where .=” OR country LIKE ‘”.$params[‘search’][‘value’].”%’ )”;
      }

      // getting total number records without any search
      $sql = “SELECT memberID, username, urank, gender, datejoined, lastseen, country FROM `members` “;

      Reply

  17. I had 2 tables, t1 has id, name and t2 has cid, value. t1 id has foreignkey cid. In your code u fetch full row and assign it to data[]. i need to display t2. First i fetch cid, then search cid from t1 then fetch name. i need to display name, cid, value. how to display 3 values, what can i do… U cannot understand my question just send mail to me, i ill give brief explanation. Thanks advance….

    Reply

  19. In this belowed code, u fetch the value as a row. i want to fetch id and compare with other table. fetch certain value and display that value. for example table Name t1 and t2.. t1 has id, name. t2 has id and value. i need fetch t1 id and compare the id with t2 id, and fetch t2 value and display in data tables. what can i do…

    Reply

  22. Hi

    Its grate table, but is there any way where we can perform search at client side for data which loaded in one chunk. Lest say if I loaded 100 data then search will be perform on this particular records just like old data-table do. Please confirm its very help full to us to user new table.

    Reply

  24. How can i add href link on any of the table data

    Eg: if want add a link on employee id to divert to employee detail page or something like that

    Please help me

    Reply

  26. How can I get resultant data in success event. I append success event there after that dataTable is not working. any help?

    Reply

  32. Hi,
    I change added new table then i changed only colunm name but it did not work. I did not change anything. do you think what can be wrong!

    Reply

  33. Thank you so much for this tutorial!! I’ve been trying to make a datatable server side without success since forever, all the documentation out there is pretty confusing. I finally could understand it and make it work thanks to you. You are my hero. :D!!!

    Reply

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