Hello,

Firstly, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delayed response as we have been experiencing an unusually high number of tickets. I am sorry that it has taken longer than usual to respond to your concern and your patience is highly appreciated.

Sorry to disappoint you, but at this time, we don't have any built-in solution to achieve this

You can suggest it to our developers, though - they will do their best to make a solution in the future.

Please feel free to search on our suggestions page, 

 to see if someone may be already suggested this feature. If you can't see it, feel free to add your suggestion there,  and as more people vote, the feature will move higher on the priority list.

You can certainly follow our changeLog page if you'd like ( it is also available in the plugin dashboard), where we state any changes/new features/bug fixes during updates;

and our newsletter, so you're informed about new features, bug fixes, freebies, etc.

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If you have coding skills and wish to try to make a custom solution now,

you can check out our available hooks for Developers on this documentation and see if you can find any hook that might help.

Please be advised that custom solutions with hooks are not included in our support.

You can also research resources such as Stack Overflow to see if any other user perhaps found a workaround.

( We do like to give examples for certain solutions, but for this use-case, we, unfortunately, don't have anything yet)

And i just wanted to point out that you can try wpDataTables before purchasing

 on our sandbox Demo sites ( you can find links for the main plugin Demo,  

as well as add-on Demos, in my signature),

and there is a 15-day money-back guarantee period, 

so if you purchase the plugin, you can safely fully test it out, and if it doesn't fit your needs you can request and receive a refund in that period. ( same goes for all plugins and add-ons)

Let me know if you have any additional questions. 

Hi Lily,

I am not sure if I understand this fully, what you mean exactly by preventing the users from scraping your database.

If you simply wish to limit what the user can export from your Table on the front-end, we will elaborate how the Export Tools draw 'which rows are exported' from the Table on a Page.

The table tools functionalities are based on a 3rd party HTML5 library.

There are some limitations in this library we will emphasize for your awareness:

• For tables with server-side processing (Manual tables and SQL Query-based Tables with server-side option enabled), only the visible rows will be exported to any format.
  If you want the entire table to be exported (or copied to a clipboard), you need to choose the “Show All” feature in the “show … entries” block, and then do the export:
• Generated PDF, XLS, CSV are not customizable. Unfortunately, the library allows very little “fine-tuning” of the generated files, so font, size, and other properties cannot be changed (but the title can – see below).
• Conditional formatting is not reflected in any of generated export files.
• Other front-end extensions cannot be combined with Table Tools. If you have row grouping enabled for the table, or there are some customizations you did yourself, they won’t be reflected in the generated Excel, CSV or PDF document, nor in the clipboard.
• When you export tables with the wpDataTables plugin, please note that you can export values, but not formulas. WpDataTables doesn’t support exporting formulas, so a Formula column will be exported only with values; and any calculations of Average, MIN, MAX, and Total will not be exported at all.
• Exporting images is not possible at the moment, but you are able to export them as HTML with the new “Include HTML” option.
• You can’t export columns that are hidden – they will not be visible in any exporting or printing tool.
• Export numbers with comma as decimal separators have issues in the Excel report. Please use the CSV export button or change column type to string for these columns.

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If you need better PDF export features, our advice would be to acquire something like the WP Advanced PDF plugin, which offers a lot more options when creating PDF files from our tables, along with other content on your website.

So, please check out all these details and limitations - how the rows are being exported, etc.

If you want to prevent users from exporting your Table, you can simply disable the "Table tools" export options or just allow some specific buttons as you wish.

If any filter is applied to a Table, then only the filtered rows are exported.

If the table has server-side processing, then as explained above, it only exports the visible filtered rows ( only the table page visible);

or if it does not have server-side processing, then it exports all the filtered rows regardless of table's pagination.

Let me know if that covers what you asked, or if you meant something else, please elaborate in more details;

try to clarify as much as possible, add screenshots or a Video if possible, etc, then we will advise.

If you send any sensitive data, just ensure the reply is PRIVATE, then only we can see it.

Hi Lily,

Sorry to disappoint you on that point, but at the moment, we do not have any way to set a limitation as how many rows a user can export per each day.

It is an interesting idea, so you can add a future development suggestion, but for now we don't have any 'out of the box solution' for this.

You can use the same process as advised in an earlier reply, as well as to follow our ChangeLog and Newsletter if you wish to stay informed.

I can't say a realistic ETA if or when something like that might get added, but we will write a patch note if it gets added in an update.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you.

Hi Lily,

You're welcome.

If anything else comes up, please don't hesitate to open a new ticket.

Thank you.