Uncaught TypeError: Can't read property 'length' from undefined when trying to populate responsive datatable with PHP?
I'm trying to populate a response datatable with an AJAX request to a PHP script, the response is returned in JSON_encode format, I can see the response in the XHR requests:
["abc","def","ght","jkl"]
Here is the code I'm using:
<table class="table table-striped table-bordered table-hover" id="dataTables-example">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
</tr>
</tfoot>
</table>
$('#dataTables-example').DataTable({
responsive: true,
"ajax": "search_autocomplete.php",
});
Here is the PHP script:
if ($result->num_rows >0) {
// output data of each row
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
$list[] =$row['name'];
}
echo json_encode( $list );
}
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If you want to insert an array datasource i.e. not literal objects, the source must be an array of arrays:
[["abc"],["def"],["ght"],["jkl"]]
$('#dataTables-example').DataTable({
"ajax": {
url: "search_autocomplete.php",
dataSrc: ''
}
});
if ($result->num_rows >0) {
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
$list[] = array($row['name']); //<----
}
echo json_encode($list);
}
This is also true if you use Jonathans offer json_encode( array(data => $list))
- you will still each element will need to wrap the array, otherwise you will get a
, d
, g
and so on, because dataTables as an array, which it expects each character is treated as an array element , data for the column.
if ($result->num_rows >0) {
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
$list[] = array($row['name']); //<----
}
echo json_encode(array('data' => $list));
}
$('#dataTables-example').DataTable({
"ajax": "search_autocomplete.php"
});
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When using only a string value , at least the DataTables parameter ajax
expects the response to be wrapped in another object:
Note that DataTables expects the table data to be an array of elements in an
data
object parameter ...{ "data": [ // row 1 data source, // row 2 data source, // etc ] }
To get this you can wrap $list
in another one array()
before encoding:
echo json_encode( array( data => $list ) );
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