Hello,

I was working on a project for a client but I encountered a problem with the JS Api.

I need to search for a regex in a column. I tried this:

jQuery('#table_1').dataTable().api().column(1).search( 'cas|imp', true, false ).draw()

but it's not working. When using only .search("cas") or .search("imp"), I get the results I need but not when using a regex.

This code works with datatables jquery plugin and the documentation of wpdatatables states that wpdatatables is using datatables jquery plugin. https://wpdatatables.com/documentation/information-for-developers/front-end-callbacks/

What am I doing wrong?

Hello Milan,

No worries about the delay, I saw the notification. Thanks for you response.

I already looked at the documentation of Datatables. I even included there librairies to try some stuff. When I initialise the table with their script the exact search work on the same table. But when I use wpDatatable version it does not.

I made a few tests last night and read the code in wdt.frontend.min.js but could not find why I cant change the search parameters in JS.

Could that help if I upload an example on a server later today?

Regards

Ok I just figured it out.

I found out while reverse engineering the plugin that regular expression search does not work when server processing is enabled. The variable

$_POST['columns'][$i]['search']['regex']

is never used in class.wpdatable.php when filtering is applied. 

I modified the function queryBasedConstruct based on the code for multiselect type which handle the regex I needed. Nonetheless it would be nice to have a warning in the developer documentation that wpDataTables does not features every functionality of DataTables (like regex search) when server processing is enabled (which is used in the paid version).

This feature can be really useful when handling very big excel files and a custom frontend.

Regards