How to enable/disable ordering to any column in DataTable

Tech Area
April 20, 2024

In this post, We will discuss how to enable and disable jquery datatable ordering feature to any column.

Files used in this tutorial:

1- connection.php (database connection file)

2- index.php (fetch data from database and initialise datatable)

Below are the step by step process of how to enable and disable jQuery DataTable ordering feature to any column.

Step 1: Create a Database connection

In this step, create a new file connection.php to create database connection.

connection.php

<?php
$server = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "";
$database = "college_db";
$connection = mysqli_connect("$server","$username","$password");
$select_db = mysqli_select_db($connection, $database);
if(!$select_db)
{
	echo("connection terminated");
}
?>

Step 2: Create a file for fetch data and initialise DataTable

Now create a new file index.php This is the main file used for fetch data from database. First, We will create an HTML Table.

index.php

First of all include necessary CSS and JavaScript library.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdn.datatables.net/2.0.3/css/dataTables.dataTables.min.css">
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="//cdn.datatables.net/2.0.3/js/dataTables.min.js"></script>

Now create body for Table.

<body>
<table id="myTable">
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>Name</th>
    <th>Course</th>
    <th>Country</th>
  </tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
	<?php
		include('connection.php');
		$select_query = mysqli_query($connection,"select * from tbl_student");
		while($data = mysqli_fetch_array($select_query)){
	?>
  <tr>
    <td><?php echo $data['name']; ?></td>
    <td><?php echo $data['course']; ?></td>
    <td><?php echo $data['country']; ?></td>
  </tr>
  <?php } ?>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>

After this, create script for initialise datatable and enable datatable features like ordering.

<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $('#myTable').DataTable({
    order: [1,'asc']
  });
});
</script>

Source Code

Here is the full code that we have written for index.php.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>jQuery DataTables</title>
<style>
table {
  font-family: arial, sans-serif;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  width: 100%;
}

td, th {
  border: 1px solid #dddddd;
  text-align: left;
  padding: 8px;
}
</style>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdn.datatables.net/2.0.3/css/dataTables.dataTables.min.css">
</head>
<body>
<table id="myTable">
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>Name</th>
    <th>Course</th>
    <th>Country</th>
  </tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
  <?php
    include('connection.php');
    $select_query = mysqli_query($connection,"select * from tbl_student");
    while($data = mysqli_fetch_array($select_query)){
  ?>
  <tr>
    <td><?php echo $data['name']; ?></td>
    <td><?php echo $data['course']; ?></td>
    <td><?php echo $data['country']; ?></td>
  </tr>
  <?php } ?>
</tbody>
</table>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="//cdn.datatables.net/2.0.3/js/dataTables.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $('#myTable').DataTable({
    order: [0,'asc']
  });
});
</script>
</body>
</html>

Output