ellipsis

Restrict output data to a particular length, showing anything longer with ellipsis and a browser provided tooltip on hover.

• Author: Allan Jardine
• Requires: DataTables 1.10+

This data rendering helper method can be useful for cases where you have potentially large data strings to be shown in a column that is restricted by width. The data for the column is still fully searchable and sortable, but if it is longer than a give number of characters, it will be truncated and shown with ellipsis. A browser provided tooltip will show the full string to the end user on mouse hover of the cell.

This function should be used with the columns.render configuration option of DataTables.

It accepts three parameters:

1. integer - The number of characters to restrict the displayed data to.
2. boolean (optional - default false) - Indicate if the truncation of the string should not occur in the middle of a word (true) or if it can (false). This can allow the display of strings to look nicer, at the expense of showing less characters.
3. boolean (optional - default false) - Escape HTML entities (true) or not (false - default).

Plug-in code

jQuery.fn.dataTable.render.ellipsis = function ( cutoff, wordbreak, escapeHtml ) {
    var esc = function ( t ) {
        return ('' + t)
            .replace( /&/g, '&' )
            .replace( /</g, '&lt;' )
            .replace( />/g, '&gt;' )
            .replace( /"/g, '&quot;' );
    };

    return function ( d, type, row ) {
        // Order, search and type get the original data
        if ( type !== 'display' ) {
            return d;
        }

        if ( typeof d !== 'number' && typeof d !== 'string' ) {
            if ( escapeHtml ) {
                return esc( d );
            }
            return d;
        }

        d = d.toString(); // cast numbers

        if ( d.length <= cutoff ) {
            if ( escapeHtml ) {
                return esc( d );
            }
            return d;
        }

        var shortened = d.substr(0, cutoff-1);

        // Find the last white space character in the string
        if ( wordbreak ) {
            shortened = shortened.replace(/\s([^\s]*)$/, '');
        }

        // Protect against uncontrolled HTML input
        if ( escapeHtml ) {
            shortened = esc( shortened );
        }

        return '<span class="ellipsis" title="'+esc(d)+'">'+shortened+'&#8230;</span>';
    };
};

CDN

This plug-in is available on the DataTables CDN:

Note that if you are using multiple plug-ins, it is beneficial in terms of performance to combine the plug-ins into a single file and host it on your own server, rather than making multiple requests to the DataTables CDN.

Version control

If you have any ideas for how this plug-in can be improved, or spot anything that is in error, it is available on GitHub and pull requests are very welcome!

• This plug-in: ellipsis.js
• Full DataTables plug-ins repository: DataTables/Plugins

Examples

// Restrict a column to 17 characters, don't split words
  $('#example').DataTable( {
    columnDefs: [ {
      targets: 1,
      render: $.fn.dataTable.render.ellipsis( 17, true )
    } ]
  } );

// Restrict a column to 10 characters, do split words
  $('#example').DataTable( {
    columnDefs: [ {
      targets: 2,
      render: $.fn.dataTable.render.ellipsis( 10 )
    } ]
  } );