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JavaScript

Render url in Datatables

Hey Everyone,

I am using the jQuery plugin, Datatables. I'm displaying data from a SharePoint list in a datatable using this code:

$(document).ready(function() {
    var RestUrl = "../_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('BrandItems')/items";
    $.ajax({
        url: RestUrl,
        method: "GET",
        headers: {
            "accept": "application/json;odata=verbose",
        },
        success: function(data) {
            if (data.d.results.length > 0) {
                //construct HTML Table from the JSON Data
                $('#DatatableGrid').append(GenerateTableFromJson(data.d.results));
                //Bind the HTML data with Jquery DataTable
                var oTable = $('#EmployeeTable').dataTable({
                    "iDisplayLength": 10,
                    "aLengthMenu": [
                        [5, 10, 30, 50],
                        [5, 10, 30, 50]
                    ],
                    "sPaginationType": "full_numbers"
                });
            } else {
                $('#DatatableGrid').append("<span>No Employee Details Found.</span>");
            }
        },
        error: function(data) {
            $('#DatatableGrid').append("<span>Error Retreiving Employee Details. Error : " + JSON.stringify(data) + "</span>");
        }
    });

    function GenerateTableFromJson(objArray) {
        var tableContent = '<table id="EmployeeTable" style="width:100%"><thead><tr><td>File Name</td>' + '<td>File Type</td>' + '<td>Organization</td>' + '<td>Download</td>' + '</tr></thead><tbody>';
        for (var i = 0; i < objArray.length; i++) {
            tableContent += '<tr>';
            tableContent += '<td>' + objArray[i].Display_x0020_Name + '</td>';
            tableContent += '<td>' + objArray[i].FileType0 + '</td>';
            tableContent += '<td>' + objArray[i].Organization + '</td>';
            tableContent += '<td>' + objArray[i].DL_Link + '</td>';
            tableContent += '</tr>';
        }
        return tableContent;
    }
});

The "tableContent += '<td>' + objArray[i].DL_Link + '</td>';" line shows [object Object] when rendered in the datatables. It's a URL field. After an intense amount of Googling, I came across this piece of example code:

{
                                "mData": "ID",
                                "render": function(mData, type, row, meta) {
                                        var returnText = "";
                                        var url = _spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl + "/Lists/ProjectDetails/DispForm.aspx?ID=" + mData;
                                        returnText = "<a target='_blank' href=" + url + ">" + mData + "</a>";
                                        return returnText;
                                }

                        }

But I don't grasp the concept of how to add it to my existing code in order to display the url column.

Can someone explain how I would do that?

Appreciate any help.

1 Answer

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,736 Points

Can you print objArray[i].DL_Link to the console, what does it look like? Maybe you need to access some property inside of it.

Also, template literals would be very handy here to build up these sections of HTML, rather than using concatenation.