jquery datatable - set column width and wrap text

Question

We are using the Scroller plugin for our jquery data table to allow virtual scrolling. However, we have requirement to support text wrapping inside a cell, as user would like to view the entire text instead of truncated one. I observed that it does not wrap the text by default. Is there a way to support this feature? Any possible workaround?

Fiddler https://jsfiddle.net/Vimalan/2koex0bt/1/

html Code:

<table id="example" class="display" cellspacing="0" width="100%"></table>

js code:

var detailsSample = "DataTables and its extensions are extremely configurable libraries and almost every aspect of the enhancements they make to HTML tables can be customised. Features can be enabled, disabled or customised to meet your exact needs for your table implementations."
var dataList = [];

for (var i=1; i<=500; i++)
{
    var dataRow = {};

    dataRow.ID = i;
    dataRow.FirstName = "First Name " + i;
    dataRow.LastName = "Last Name " + i;

    if (i%5 ==0)
    {
        dataRow.Details = detailsSample;
    }
    else
    {
        dataRow.Details = "Large text "+i;
    }
    dataRow.Country = "Country Name";

    dataList.push(dataRow);
}

$('#example').DataTable( {
                data:                       dataList,
        deferRender:    true,
        scrollX:                true,
        scrollY:        200,
        scrollCollapse: true,
        scroller:       true,
        searching:          false,
        paging:                 true,
        info:                   false,
        columns: [
                { title: "ID", data: "ID" },
                { title: "First Name", data: "FirstName" },
                { title: "Change Summary", data: "LastName"},
                { title: "Details", data: "Details", "width": "400px"  },
                { title: "Country", data: "Country" }               
            ]
    } );

Expectation

In the above table, the "Details" column should always have a width of 400px and the text in that column should wrap.

Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1

Found the solution by wrapping the column data in a div and setting the white-space, width css properties for the div.

Fiddler:https://jsfiddle.net/Vimalan/2koex0bt/6/

JS

$('#example').DataTable( {
        data:           dataList,
        deferRender:    true,
        scrollX:        true,
        scrollY:        200,
        scrollCollapse: true,
        scroller:       true,
        searching:      false,
        paging:         true,
        info:           false,
        columns: [
                { title: "ID", data: "ID" },
                { title: "First Name", data: "FirstName" },
                { title: "Change Summary", data: "LastName"},
                { title: "Details", data: "Details" },
                { title: "Country", data: "Country" }               
            ],
            columnDefs: [
                {
                    render: function (data, type, full, meta) {
                        return "<div class='text-wrap width-200'>" + data + "</div>";
                    },
                    targets: 3
                }
             ]
    } );

CSS

.text-wrap{
    white-space:normal;
}
.width-200{
    width:200px;
}

Solution 2

Not sure if you add in stylesheets or not, but set your table-layout to fixed and add in the white-space. Currently you are using white-space:no-wrap which negates what you're trying to do. Also I set a max-width to all your td's so this will happen whenever there is overflow.

Add this at the end of your jQUery

https://jsfiddle.net/2koex0bt/5/

$(document).ready(function(){
    $('#example').DataTable();
    $('#example td').css('white-space','initial');
});

If you want to just use the api, do this ( add in anymore CSS to change the styling ).

If you want to do it with CSS, do this:

table {
  table-layout:fixed;
}
table td {
  word-wrap: break-word;
  max-width: 400px;
}
#example td {
  white-space:inherit;
}