Server Side DataTable in CodeIgniter 4

CodeIgniter 4 server-side processing DataTable using jQuery ajax example; In this tutorial, you will learn how to create server side processing datatable in codeigniter 4 app using ajax with sorting, searching, filtering and pagination.

Note that, DataTables is a jQuery (Javascript library) based table advancement plug-in, It brings coherence in the data analysis process, ideally offers adding, sorting, pagination, and filtering abilities to plain HTML tables with minimal effort.

This tutorial will cover the following topics:

Integrate Datatables in codeigniter 4 app
Integrate jQuery and Bootstrap in codeigniter 4 app
Read data into MySQL DB
Display data in list using ajax
Server side datatable with sorting, searching and pagination

This tutorial will create a user list web application using server-side processing dataTables in CodeIgniter 4 example, as well as use Bootstrap 4 and dataTable js.

Datatables server side CodeIgniter 4 using Ajax

By using the following steps, you can setup and use server-side rendering in DataTable with CodeIgniter 4 projects:

Step 1 – Setup Codeigniter Project
Step 2 – Basic Configurations
Step 3 – Create Database With Table
Step 4 – Setup Database Credentials
Step 5 – Installing CodeIgniter4-DataTables Library
Step 6 – Create Model and Controller
Step 7 – Create Views
Step 8 – tart Development server

Step 1 – Setup Codeigniter Project

In this step, you will download the latest version of Codeigniter 4, Go to this link https://codeigniter.com/download Download Codeigniter 4 fresh new setup and unzip the setup in your local system xampp/htdocs/ . And change the download folder name “demo”

Step 2 – Basic Configurations

Next, you will set some basic configuration on the app/config/app.php file, so let’s go to application/config/config.php and open this file on text editor.

Set Base URL like this

public $baseURL = 'http://localhost:8080';
To
public $baseURL = 'http://localhost/demo/';

Step 3 – Create Database With Table

In this step, you need to create a database name demo, so let’s open your PHPMyAdmin and create the database with the name demo. After successfully create a database, you can use the below SQL query for creating a table in your database.

CREATE DATABASE demo;

CREATE TABLE users (
    id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT COMMENT 'Primary Key',
    name varchar(100) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Name',
    email varchar(255) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Email Address',
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='demo database' AUTO_INCREMENT=1;

INSERT INTO `users` (`id`, `name`, `email`) VALUES
(1, 'Paul Bettany', '[email protected]'),
(2, 'Vanya', '[email protected]'),
(3, 'Luther', '[email protected]'),
(4, 'John Doe', '[email protected]'),
(5, 'Paul Bettany', '[email protected]'),
(6, 'Vanya', '[email protected]'),
(7, 'Luther', '[email protected]'),
(8, 'Wayne Barrett', '[email protected]'),
(9, 'Vincent Ramos', '[email protected]'),
(10, 'Susan Warren', '[email protected]'),
(11, 'Jason Evans', '[email protected]'),
(12, 'Madison Simpson', '[email protected]'),
(13, 'Marvin Ortiz', '[email protected]'),
(14, 'Felecia Phillips', '[email protected]'),
(15, 'Tommy Hernandez', '[email protected]');

Step 4 – Setup Database Credentials

In this step, you need to connect our project to the database. you need to go app/Config/Database.php and open database.php file in text editor. After opening the file in a text editor, you need to set up database credentials in this file like below.

	public $default = [
		'DSN'      => '',
		'hostname' => 'localhost',
		'username' => 'root',
		'password' => '',
		'database' => 'demo',
		'DBDriver' => 'MySQLi',
		'DBPrefix' => '',
		'pConnect' => false,
		'DBDebug'  => (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production'),
		'cacheOn'  => false,
		'cacheDir' => '',
		'charset'  => 'utf8',
		'DBCollat' => 'utf8_general_ci',
		'swapPre'  => '',
		'encrypt'  => false,
		'compress' => false,
		'strictOn' => false,
		'failover' => [],
		'port'     => 3306,
	];

Step 5 – Installing CodeIgniter4-DataTables Library

To install datatable pluing by executing the following comamnd on terminal:

composer require hermawan/codeigniter4-datatables

then open app/Config/autoload.php. add namespace to $psr4 array. see the code below:

public $psr4 = [
    APP_NAMESPACE => APPPATH, // For custom app namespace
    'Config'      => APPPATH . 'Config',
    'PHPSQLParser'          => APPPATH .'ThirdParty/php-sql-parser/src/PHPSQLParser',
    'Hermawan\DataTables'   => APPPATH .'ThirdParty/CodeIgniter4-DataTables/src'
];

Step 6 – Create Model and Controller

So go to app/Models/ and create here one model. And you need to create one model name UserModel.php and update the following code into your UserModel.php file:

<?php 
namespace App\Models;
use CodeIgniter\Model;

class UserModel extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'users';
    protected $primaryKey = 'id';
    protected $allowedFields = ['name', 'email'];
}

Create Controller

Now Go to app/Controllers and create a controller name UsersController.php. In this controller add the follwoing code:

<?php namespace App\Controllers;
 
use \CodeIgniter\Controller;

use \Hermawan\DataTables\DataTable;
 
class UsersController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        helper('url');
        return view('list');
    }
 
    public function ajaxDataTables()
    {
        $db = db_connect();
        $builder = $db->table('users')->select('name, email, id');
         
        return DataTable::of($builder)
               ->addNumbering() //it will return data output with numbering on first column
               ->toJson();
    }
}
 
?>

Step 7 – Create Views

Now you need to create one view files name list.php and update the following code into your file:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <title></title>
 
    <!-- Bootstrap CSS CDN -->
    <link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css">
    <!-- DataTables CSS CDN -->
    <link href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/4.5.2/css/bootstrap.css" >
    <link href="https://cdn.datatables.net/1.10.24/css/dataTables.bootstrap4.min.css">
</head> 
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <h1 style="font-size:20pt"></h1>
        <h3>Customers Data</h3>
        <table id="table" class="table table-striped table-bordered" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>No</th>
                    <th>Name</th>
                    <th>Email</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody></tbody>
            <tfoot>
                <tr>
                    <th>No</th>
                    <th>Name</th>
                    <th>Email</th>
                </tr>
            </tfoot>
        </table>
    </div>
    <!-- jQuery CDN -->
    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.js"></script>
    <!-- Bootstrap 4.5 CDN  -->
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js"></script>
    <!-- DataTable CDN js -->
    <script src="https://cdn.datatables.net/1.10.24/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js"></script>
    
    <script src="https://cdn.datatables.net/1.10.24/js/dataTables.bootstrap4.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
 
    $(document).ready(function() {
        $('#table').DataTable({ 
            processing: true,
            serverSide: true,
            order: [], //init datatable not ordering
            ajax: "<?php echo site_url('ajax-datatable')?>",
            columnDefs: [
                { targets: 0, orderable: false}, //first column is not orderable.
            ]
        });
    });
    </script>
 
</body>
</html>

To define a route, So, visit app/Config/ directory and open Routes.php file. Then add the following routes into it:

// CRUD RESTful Routes
$routes->setDefaultController('UsersController');
$routes->get('list', 'UsersController::index');
$routes->get('ajax-datatable', 'UsersController::ajaxDataTables');

Step 8 – Start Development server

Execute the following command into command prompt or terminal to start the codeigniter 4 application:

php spark serve

Then visit your web browser and hit the following url on it:

http://localhost/demo/

OR

http://localhost:8080/

Conclusion

CodeIgniter 4 server side datatable example; In this tutorial, you have learned how to implement server side datatable in codeigniter 4 app.