[jquery] jQuery DataTable overflow and text-wrapping issues

I have the following DataTable (full-width css class sets width = 100%)

<table class="datatable full-width">
    <thead>
        <th>LOB</th>
        <th>Creditor Line 1</th>
        <th>Creditor Line 2</th>
        <th>Address</th>
        <th>City</th>
        <th>State</th>
        <th>Zip</th>
        <th></th>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        ...
    </tbody>
</table>

Javascript:

var profileTable =
            $(".datatable").dataTable({
                "iDisplayLength": 25,
                "bDestroy": true,
                "bJQueryUI": true,
                "sPaginationType": "full_numbers",
                "bAutoWidth": false
            });

Everything works fine until there is a record with a long text string...when a record appears with really long text, the data table overflows on the right of the page. (See Screenshot Below, the red line is where the page should end) http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/h430/tbarbedo/overflow.jpg

Can someone tell me how to either wrap the text in the cells or prevent this overflow issue?

I've tried via 'table-layout: fixed'...this prevents the overflow but sets all of the columns to the same width.

Thanks

The following CSS declaration works for me:

.td-limit {
    max-width: 70px;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
}

You can just use render and wrap your own div or span around it. TD`s are hard to style when it comes to max-width, max-height, etc. Div and span is easy..

See: https://datatables.net/examples/advanced_init/column_render.html

I think a nicer solution then working with CSS hacks which are not supported cross browser.

You can try setting the word-wrap however it doesn't work in all browsers yet.

Another method would be to add an element around your cell data like this:

<td><span>...</span></td>

Then add some css like this:

.datatable td span{
    max-width: 400px;
    display: block;
    overflow: hidden;
}

The same problem and I solved putting the table between the code

<div class = "table-responsive"> </ div>

I faced the same problem of text wrapping, solved it by changing the css of table class in DT_bootstrap.css. I introduced last two css lines table-layout and word-break.

   table.table {
    clear: both;
    margin-bottom: 6px !important;
    max-width: none !important;
    table-layout: fixed;
    word-break: break-all;
   } 

Try adding td {word-wrap: break-word;} to the css and see if it fixes it.

Just simply the css style using white-space:nowrap works very well to avoid text wrapping in cells. And ofcourse you can use the text-overflow:ellipsis and overflow:hidden for truncating text with ellipsis effect.

<td style="white-space:nowrap">Cell Value</td>

I settled for the limitation (to some people a benefit) of having my rows only one line of text high. The CSS to contain long strings then becomes:

.datatable td {
  overflow: hidden; /* this is what fixes the expansion */
  text-overflow: ellipsis; /* not supported in all browsers, but I accepted the tradeoff */
  white-space: nowrap;
}

[edit to add:] After using my own code and initially failing, I recognized a second requirement that might help people. The table itself needs to have a fixed layout or the cells will just keep trying to expand to accomodate contents no matter what. If DataTables styles or your own styles don't already do so, you need to set it:

table.someTableClass {
  table-layout: fixed
}

Now that text is truncated with ellipses, to actually "see" the text that is potentially hidden you can implement a tooltip plugin or a details button or something. But a quick and dirty solution is to use JavaScript to set each cell's title to be identical to its contents. I used jQuery, but you don't have to:

  $('.datatable tbody td').each(function(index){
    $this = $(this);
    var titleVal = $this.text();
    if (typeof titleVal === "string" && titleVal !== '') {
      $this.attr('title', titleVal);
    }
  });

DataTables also provides callbacks at the row and cell rendering levels, so you could provide logic to set the titles at that point instead of with a jQuery.each iterator. But if you have other listeners that modify cell text, you might just be better off hitting them with the jQuery.each at the end.

This entire truncation method will ALSO have a limitation you've indicated you're not a fan of: by default columns will have the same width. I identify columns that are going to be consistently wide or consistently narrow, and explicitly set a percentage-based width on them (you could do it in your markup or with sWidth). Any columns without an explicit width get even distribution of the remaining space.

That might seem like a lot of compromises, but the end result was worth it for me.

I'm way late here, but after reading @Greg Pettit's answer and a couple of blogs or other SO questions I unfortunately can't remember I decided to just make a couple of dataTables plugins to deal with this.

I put them on bitbucket in a Mercurial repo. I follwed the fnSetFilteringDelay plugin and just changed the comments and code inside, as I've never made a plugin for anything before. I made 2, and feel free to use them, contribute to them, or provide suggestions.

• dataTables.TruncateCells - truncates each cell in a column down to a set number of characters, replacing the last 3 with an ellipses, and puts the full pre-truncated text in the cell's title attributed.

• dataTables.BreakCellText - attempts to insert a break character every X, user defined, characters in each cell in the column. There are quirks regarding cells that contain both spaces and hyphens, you can get some weird looking results (like a couple of characters straggling after the last inserted
  character). Maybe someone can make that more robust, or you can just fiddle with the breakPos for the column to make it look alright with your data.

Using the classes "responsive nowrap" on the table element should do the trick.