jQuery DataTables with Node.js

Question

So i am trying to implement a pagination table with the datatables plugin, this is my first time using this plugin. I followed the documentation on the plugin and tried to get the values from the server through the use of Ajax, as per presented in the plugins documentation.

I seem to be getting the following error once i make the get request and i am unsure of why?

Error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined

On client side i have the following code

viewReports = {
    init: function(){
        $('#paginatedData').DataTable({
            "processing": true,
            "serverSide": true,
            "ajax": '/viewreports'
        });

    }
};

$(document).ready(viewReports.init);

In my server side i have the following

router.get('/viewreports', function(res, req){

    async.parallel({
        viewReports: function(callback){
            restCall('/rest/bugbounty/latest/message/searchReport', 'POST', parameters, function(data){
                callback(null, data);
            }); 
        }
    }, function(err, result){
        if(!err){
            res.send(result.viewReports);
            res.render('viewreports');
        }
    });
});

Returned JSON:

{ reportList: [ { reportID: 'EIBBP-448', eBayUserID: ' ', reportStatus: 'New', summary: 'BugBounty Report created by Raj', lastUpdatedDate: '2015-06-15 01:05', createdDate: '2015-06-15 01:05', paypalLoginID: '[email protected]' } ], searchStatus: 'Success', eBayUserID: '', errorCode: '0', rowCount: '6', pageNumber: '1', paginationValue: '1', paypalLoginID: '[email protected]' }

It would be great to know if there is anyone who has worked with node.js server side processing for datatables

Solution

You need to define dataSrc and columns.data - the following should work :

var table = $('#example').DataTable({
    processing: true,
    serverSide: true,
    ajax: {
        url: "/viewreports",
        dataSrc: "reportList"
    },    
    columns: [ 
        { data : "reportID" },
        { data : "eBayUserID" },
        { data : "reportStatus" },
        { data : "summary" },
        { data : "lastUpdatedDate" },        
        { data : "createdDate" },        
        { data : "paypalLoginID" }
   ]     
}); 

on an empty table :

<table id="example"></table>  

• dataSrc to specify what the array holding row items is named (cause of "Cannot read property 'length' of undefined")
• columns.data to map item properties to columns