# Editor example Customised control buttons

Very often, when editing a form, the system user is required to perform a repetitious task that you wish to optimise the action of. For example, this might be activating a user account in a list of users, where you simply click an Activate button.

In this example, we make use of Buttons's ability to easily create customised button actions to show a button that will use the Editor form (without displaying it to the end user) to add 250 to the salary value for the selected row. This is done by specifying a custom button action function using `buttons.buttons.action` - that function will edit the currently selected row, alter the salary value and submit it to the server.

It is worth noting that Buttons is used in this example for simplicity, but you could use any control on your page that you wish!

Name | Position | Office | Extn. | Start date | Salary
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Name | Position | Office | Extn. | Start date | Salary

- Javascript
- HTML
- CSS
- Ajax
- Server-side script

The Javascript shown below is used to initialise the table shown in this example:

`var editor; // use a global for the submit and return data rendering in the examples $(document).ready(function() { editor = new $.fn.dataTable.Editor( { ajax: "../../controllers/staff.php", table: "#example", fields: [ { label: "First name:", name: "first_name" }, { label: "Last name:", name: "last_name" }, { label: "Position:", name: "position" }, { label: "Office:", name: "office" }, { label: "Extension:", name: "extn" }, { label: "Start date:", name: "start_date" }, { label: "Salary:", name: "salary" } ] } ); var table = $('#example').DataTable( { dom: "Bfrtip", ajax: "../../controllers/staff.php", columns: [ { data: null, render: function ( data, type, row ) { // Combine the first and last names into a single table field return data.first_name+' '+data.last_name; } }, { data: "position" }, { data: "office" }, { data: "extn" }, { data: "start_date" }, { data: "salary", render: $.fn.dataTable.render.number( ',', '.', 0, '$' ) } ], select: true, buttons: [ { extend: "create", editor: editor }, { extend: "edit", editor: editor }, { extend: "selectedSingle", text: "Salary +250", action: function ( e, dt, node, config ) { // Immediately add `250` to the value of the salary and submit editor .edit( table.row( { selected: true } ).index(), false ) .set( 'salary', (editor.get( 'salary' )*1) + 250 ) .submit(); } }, { extend: "remove", editor: editor } ] } ); } );`

In addition to the above code, the following Javascript library files are loaded for use in this example:

- https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.js
- https://cdn.datatables.net/1.10.20/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js
- https://cdn.datatables.net/buttons/1.6.0/js/dataTables.buttons.min.js
- https://cdn.datatables.net/select/1.3.1/js/dataTables.select.min.js
- ../../js/dataTables.editor.min.js

The HTML shown below is the raw HTML table element, before it has been enhanced by DataTables:

This example uses a little bit of additional CSS beyond what is loaded from the library files (below), in order to correctly display the table. The additional CSS used is shown below:

`a.marginLeft { margin-left: 1em; }`

The following CSS library files are loaded for use in this example to provide the styling of the table:

- https://cdn.datatables.net/1.10.20/css/jquery.dataTables.min.css
- https://cdn.datatables.net/buttons/1.6.0/css/buttons.dataTables.min.css
- https://cdn.datatables.net/select/1.3.1/css/select.dataTables.min.css
- ../../css/editor.dataTables.min.css

This table loads data by Ajax. The latest data that has been loaded is shown below. This data will update automatically as any additional data is loaded.

The script used to perform the server-side processing for this table is shown below. Please note that this is just an example script using PHP. Server-side processing scripts can be written in any language, using the protocol described in the DataTables documentation.