How to reinitialize dataTables with newly fetched data from server using ajax in MVC

Question

So here I have list of menus for admin and under them I have Upload news. When this particular menu is clicked, I call a partial view as below.

$("#body_data").load("/Admin/GetDailyNews", function () {
          $("#dailyNews").dataTable({
                    "lengthMenu": [[5, 10, 25, 50, -1], [5, 10, 25, 50, "All"]],
                    "columnDefs": [{ "targets": 3, "orderable": false }],
                    "pagingType": "full_numbers",
                    "oLanguage": { "sSearch": "" },
                    "deferRender": true
          });
}

My PartialViewResult in AdminController is as below:

[HttpGet]
public PartialViewResult GetDailyNews()
{
     var context=new MyContext();
     List<AVmodel.NewsEventsViewModel> model = new List<AVmodel.NewsEventsViewModel>();
     List<news> news = (from n in context.news where n.stdate >= System.DateTime.Now orderby n.stdate descending select n).ToList();
     foreach (var NEWS in news)
     {
          model.Add(new AVmodel.NewsEventsViewModel()
          {
               EDate = NEWS.stdate,
               EDesc = NEWS.brief,
               EName = Convert.ToString(NEWS.name),
               NID = NEWS.nid
          });
     }
     return PartialView("_UploadNews", model);
}

My _UploadNews.cshtml is as below

@model IEnumerable<MCB.Models.BusinessObjects.AVmodel.NewsEventsViewModel>
<table id="dailyNews" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="table table-condensed table-hover table-responsive table-bordered order-column">
     <thead>
           <tr>
               <th>Event Date</th>
               <th>Event Name</th>
               <th>Detailed News</th>
               <th class="disabled">Actions</th>
          </tr>
     </thead>
     <tbody>
          @foreach (var news in Model)
          {
               <tr data-row="[email protected]">
                   <td>@news.EDate.Date.ToShortDateString()</td>
                   <td>@Convert.ToString(news.EName)</td>
                   <td>@Convert.ToString(news.EDesc)</td>
                   <td><button class="btn btn-primary" data-target="#editAddNews" data-toggle="modal" onclick="javascript: EditNews(this);" data-info="[email protected]"><span class="fa fa-edit"></span> </button>&nbsp; <button class="btn btn-danger" onclick="javascript: DeleteNews(this);" data-info="[email protected]"><span class="fa fa-trash-o"></span></button></td>
               </tr>
          }
     </tbody>
</table>

So till now it's good. Everything is going well and the table displays only those news which are of future days. Now I have a option for admin to fetch the whole set of news from table, including past days. So I have kept a checkbox in my partialview as below which is a bootstrap switch type:

<input type="checkbox" name="fetchNews-checkbox" data-on-text="All News" data-off-text="Upcoming News" data-on-color="primary" data-off-color="default" data-label-width="100px" data-label-text="News details">

and I have written a onswitchchange for that particular checkbox as below:

$("[name='fetchNews-checkbox']").on('switchChange.bootstrapSwitch', function (event, state) {
     if (state) 
     {
           fetchNews('all');
     }
     else 
     {
           fetchNews('upcoming');
     }
});

and my fetchNews function is as below:

function fetchNews(context)
{
    if(context!="")
    {
        $("#dailyNews").dataTable({
            "sPaginationType": "full_numbers",
            "bProcessing": true,
            "bServerSide": true,
            "sAjaxSource": "/Admin/FetchNews"
        });
    }
}

when this function is called I am getting an alert which says

DataTables warning: table id=dailyNews - Cannot reinitialise DataTable. For more information about this error, please see http://datatables.net/tn/3

I visited the above said link but was not able to understand anything. Can anyone please let me know, how to call a controller json method and render list of news into this Table?

Answer 1

The error message http://datatables.net/tn/3 states the problem precisely. You're re-initializing the table with different options in fetchNews().

You need to destroy the table first, see http://datatables.net/manual/tech-notes/3#destroy. You can do that with $("#dailyNews").dataTable().fnDestroy() (DataTables 1.9.x) or $("#dailyNews").DataTable().destroy() (DataTables 1.10.x).

function fetchNews(context)
{
     if(context!="")
     {
        // Destroy the table
        // Use $("#dailyNews").DataTable().destroy() for DataTables 1.10.x
        $("#dailyNews").dataTable().fnDestroy()

        $("#dailyNews").dataTable({
           // ... skipped ...
        });
    }
}

Alternatively, if you're using DataTables 1.10.x, you can initialize the new table with additional option "destroy": true, see below.

function fetchNews(context)
{
     if(context!="")
     {
        $("#dailyNews").dataTable({
            "destroy": true,
            // ... skipped ...
        });
    }
}