CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jquerydatatables
Randy Minder
Randy Minder

Reputation: 48402

jQuery / DataTables - Export to Excel

I'm creating an MVC 5 / Bootstrap application. I have a need to allow the user to send table data to Excel. I know that TableTools can do that. However, I don't want to use DataTables/TableTools for anything else but export to Excel. I don't want to use it to do any table styling. I'm using Bootstrap for that.

So, is there a way I can use DataTables/TableTools for strictly this purpose? And I'd also like to be able to put a button somewhere on my form (not necessarily the default TableTools button), and, when clicked, do the Excel export. Is this possible?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 12504

Answers (1)

lintunen
lintunen

Reputation: 131

I would say most likely not because the TableTools plugin is designed to operate on DataTables objects. Personally I wouldn't spend any time investigating this if don't wish to use DataTables, but rather I'll share an overview of how I implemented similar functionality for an ASP.NET MVC 5/Bootstrap site.

Simply placed a button on my view:

<button id="export" type="button">Export</button>

In the script section for my view I added a function for the click event (in this example, I am passing in my DataTable's additional parameters):

$("#export").click(function (e) {
var myTableSettings = dataTable.dataTableSettings[0];

$.ajax(
    {
        url: "GenerateCsv",
        type: "POST",
        data: myTableSettings.oAjaxData,
        success: function (data) {
            document.location.href = 'DownloadCsv';
        }
        error: function () {}               
    });
});

As the ajax call does not handle the headers to initiate a file download, it requires a two step approach: Firstly an ActionResult to generate the file ('GenerateCsv') and a FileStreamResult to return the file ('DownloadCsv').

In this case, I used LinqToCsv (http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/25133/LINQ-to-CSV-library) to generate the CSV file. I mention the CSV format as TableTools creates a CSV file recognized by Excel and not a true Excel file (http://datatables.net/extensions/tabletools/buttons).

When I initially investigated TableTools I ran into an issue on how to re-bind my custom parameters when wishing to do a full table export using the Download plugin so found this approach preferable.

Upvotes: 3

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