DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery • Hacker News Board

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#51

Post by randlet » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 12:55 PM UTC

theallan wrote: post #33

DataTables author here - I've often wondered what article or software I might write to see if I could get onto the hacker news front page. Apparently the trick is to wake up one morning and be very pleasantly surprised to see existing software already there :-) Very happy to answer any questions if anyone has any!

Nice to see DataTables on HN, thanks for creating a great library!

Just FYI, your library is being used clinically every day in a number of cancer centres in Canada as part of the open source QA tool for radiation therapy clinics that I wrote[1].

p.s. like others, I'm not a big fan of Hungarian Notation, but it's really no big deal at all and kind of a silly thing to complain about given how useful the library is.

[1] https://bitbucket.org/tohccmedphys/qatrackplus

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#52

Post by vyrotek » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:34 PM UTC

Well this was random. I literally started using DataTables for the first time just today for a new project. I must admit, the Hungarian notation is a bit distracting at first. The documentation could be better as well.

In the past I've used dgrid with the DojoToolkit. It's not for everyone, but it was great to work with.

http://dojofoundation.org/packages/dgrid/

http://demos.dojotoolkit.org/demos/themePreviewer/demo.html

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#53

Post by kamjam » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:48 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #18

freeasinfree wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatives such as? They use Hungarian Notation[0]; not random, but dated. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation

Ah, you're correct. I don't program in any language that considers hungarian notation to be a common naming convention so I haven't ran into it before. For some reason I had not stumbled on to the page that explains this until I deliberately looked for it now. As far as alternatives go, I usually specialize based on what my needs are. If I'm using a JS framework I don't have as much of a need for an all-in-one soluti…

As far as alternatives go, I usually specialize based on what my needs are.

Well, the alternative is always to write it yourself. The same could be said for jQuery or any framework (and many have been advocating doing that) but it's always a trade off between experience/time/resources. I don't think it's really fair to compare a feature rich plugin that provides a lot of generic functionality vs what you can write for a very specific requirement, esp if you don't need the any/most of the functionality in the plugin!

I used Datatables a few years ago extensively for a provide, I actually found it very easy to work with - but I understood the notation having come from a VBScript background a long time ago - and as others have said, it was miles ahead of anything else at the time.

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#54

Post by Eyes2design » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:53 PM UTC

Using table management with my current robust Coffee script Nodejs project. I'm going to have Fun. Mostly I can only classified myself as a home-school ged self-study (Op Dev) but its always fun to read and work with other's code. do you have any idea when you will have 1.10 out in the public? is their a git hub I can look at? ..

Food for thought Magento maybe able to run some faster admin tables with this. though, I would think this would be a task in setting up. The Json is their but admin panels setup is another thing in Magento.

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#55

Post by debaserab2 » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 2:33 PM UTC

kamjam wrote: post #53

debaserab2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, you're correct. I don't program in any language that considers hungarian notation to be a common naming convention so I haven't ran into it before. For some reason I had not stumbled on to the page that explains this until I deliberately looked for it now. As far as alternatives go, I usually specialize based on what my needs are. If I'm using a JS framework I don't have as much of a need for an all-in-one soluti…

As far as alternatives go, I usually specialize based on what my needs are. Well, the alternative is always to write it yourself. The same could be said for jQuery or any framework (and many have been advocating doing that) but it's always a trade off between experience/time/resources. I don't think it's really fair to compare a feature rich plugin that provides a lot of generic functionality vs what you can write fo…

That's not what I mean necessarily. You can specialize by grabbing a single purpose library.

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#56

Post by debaserab2 » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 2:47 PM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #31

debaserab2 wrote: post #4

While I have found DataTables to be useful in the past, there are (thankfully) many other alternatives available today with a much saner API. DataTables might have the worst API I've ever seen in a Javascript library. Powerful, yes, but it has the most insane naming conventions I've ever seen. To this day I do not understand why so many properties are prefixed with random letters. There was a time when there wasn't a…

In typical HN fashion the most cranky post gets voted to the top. - Hungarian notation is 'the most insane naming convention' you have ever seen? Really? I'm guessing you haven't seen a lot. - 'There are many alternatives with a much saner API' - proceeding with not naming any, and the ones mentioned below all are lacking in features compared to DataTables - everything else I've seen tends to be a one trick pony. Obv…

Sure, I could give you a google search results list of table sorting libraries. As I mentioned in several other comments, I usually specialize based on what my needs are. There was a point in time when DataTables was your only option for certain things, but that point has passed. I've also found that some of the bigger problems that DataTables solves (data modeling, dom manipulation, dom rendering) are handled better at the framework level (angular particularly shines here) than with a javascript table library.

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#57

Post by kamjam » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 3:33 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #55

kamjam wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as alternatives go, I usually specialize based on what my needs are. Well, the alternative is always to write it yourself. The same could be said for jQuery or any framework (and many have been advocating doing that) but it's always a trade off between experience/time/resources. I don't think it's really fair to compare a feature rich plugin that provides a lot of generic functionality vs what you can write fo…

That's not what I mean necessarily. You can specialize by grabbing a single purpose library.

Sure I agree, but that's just common sense, use something that fits your purpose, it's the same for any piece of software.

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#58

Post by jessedhillon » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #40

jessedhillon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as alternatives go, it's trivial to reproduce most of DataTables' functionality with AngularJS by binding an array of objects to a template for a table. Of course DataTables has been available for years, but I have to agree that the API is atrocious. There's no excuse to be using Hungarian Notation in 20xx, but even without the naming conventions the way some of the functions are invoked and arguments are cons…

Thanks, that's way more helpful. In my case I didn't think about using Angular since I wanted the templating to be serverside in general - it's an interesting idea to use it only for the asynchronous parts. I don't get the hate for Hungarian notation and 0 based column index though. I wouldn't use Hungarian myself but I don't complain about it either - for dynamic typed languages it makes enough sense to me, since it…

I would require each column object to have a unique name property and then expect references to those columns to be by name. Column objects are configuration, completely separate from markup.

Re: DataTables – Table plug-in for jQuery

#59

Post by fedechapa » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

theallan wrote: post #33

DataTables author here - I've often wondered what article or software I might write to see if I could get onto the hacker news front page. Apparently the trick is to wake up one morning and be very pleasantly surprised to see existing software already there :-) Very happy to answer any questions if anyone has any!

I love you