Preamble

This example is almost identical to individual column example and provides the same functionality, but using <select> menus rather than input elements. The API plug-in function fnGetColumnData from Benedikt Forchhammer provides much of the logic processing required, and integration with a table is almost trivial.

One possible interaction chance would be to make use of fnGetColumnData's ability to get filtered data, so you could have the possible filtering values in the select menus to update to only those in the table, rather than all values.

Live example

Initialisation code

(function($) {
/*
 * Function: fnGetColumnData
 * Purpose:  Return an array of table values from a particular column.
 * Returns:  array string: 1d data array 
 * Inputs:   object:oSettings - dataTable settings object. This is always the last argument past to the function
 *           int:iColumn - the id of the column to extract the data from
 *           bool:bUnique - optional - if set to false duplicated values are not filtered out
 *           bool:bFiltered - optional - if set to false all the table data is used (not only the filtered)
 *           bool:bIgnoreEmpty - optional - if set to false empty values are not filtered from the result array
 * Author:   Benedikt Forchhammer <b.forchhammer /AT\ mind2.de>
 */
$.fn.dataTableExt.oApi.fnGetColumnData = function ( oSettings, iColumn, bUnique, bFiltered, bIgnoreEmpty ) {
	// check that we have a column id
	if ( typeof iColumn == "undefined" ) return new Array();
	
	// by default we only want unique data
	if ( typeof bUnique == "undefined" ) bUnique = true;
	
	// by default we do want to only look at filtered data
	if ( typeof bFiltered == "undefined" ) bFiltered = true;
	
	// by default we do not want to include empty values
	if ( typeof bIgnoreEmpty == "undefined" ) bIgnoreEmpty = true;
	
	// list of rows which we're going to loop through
	var aiRows;
	
	// use only filtered rows
	if (bFiltered == true) aiRows = oSettings.aiDisplay; 
	// use all rows
	else aiRows = oSettings.aiDisplayMaster; // all row numbers

	// set up data array	
	var asResultData = new Array();
	
	for (var i=0,c=aiRows.length; i<c; i++) {
		iRow = aiRows[i];
		var aData = this.fnGetData(iRow);
		var sValue = aData[iColumn];
		
		// ignore empty values?
		if (bIgnoreEmpty == true && sValue.length == 0) continue;

		// ignore unique values?
		else if (bUnique == true && jQuery.inArray(sValue, asResultData) > -1) continue;
		
		// else push the value onto the result data array
		else asResultData.push(sValue);
	}
	
	return asResultData;
}}(jQuery));


function fnCreateSelect( aData )
{
	var r='<select><option value=""></option>', i, iLen=aData.length;
	for ( i=0 ; i<iLen ; i++ )
	{
		r += '<option value="'+aData[i]+'">'+aData[i]+'</option>';
	}
	return r+'</select>';
}


$(document).ready(function() {
	/* Initialise the DataTable */
	var oTable = $('#example').dataTable( {
		"oLanguage": {
			"sSearch": "Search all columns:"
		}
	} );
	
	/* Add a select menu for each TH element in the table footer */
	$("tfoot th").each( function ( i ) {
		this.innerHTML = fnCreateSelect( oTable.fnGetColumnData(i) );
		$('select', this).change( function () {
			oTable.fnFilter( $(this).val(), i );
		} );
	} );
} );

Other examples