dynamic json for datatables - json

Question

I've been working with datatables and I'm able to load the datatable using getJson with strongly typed classes etc and it works just great. Until I hit one snag.
There are times I want to populate a datatable with data that "I don't know about" but I always know that it will be one row of data - it is simply a json string with dynamic content.
Now with datatables you can simply populate the table with aaData and aaCol by assigning a json string to it but my json string contains a column and data IE:
First_name:bob and so on.
A column - on Datatables would be populated with sTitle:Column1 etc and assigned to aaCol.
Does anyone know of a plug in that parses a json string into aaCol and aaData for use with datatables?

Answer 1

I believe you can solve your problem using this approach:
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#example').DataTable( {
"processing": true,
"serverSide": true,
"ajax": "scripts/objects.php",
"columns": [
{ "data": "first_name" },
{ "data": "last_name" },
{ "data": "position" },
{ "data": "office" },
{ "data": "start_date" },
{ "data": "salary" }
]
} );
} );
In the example above the dataTables uses a serverSide processing, the ajax return a object like this:
{
"draw": 1,
"recordsTotal": 57,
"recordsFiltered": 57,
"data": [
{
"first_name": "Airi",
"last_name": "Satou",
"position": "Accountant",
"office": "Tokyo",
"start_date": "28th Nov 08",
"salary": "$162,700"
}, ...
You can also set the column name using the "name" property inside the specification of each column.
You can the full example in the following link. If you need more assistance I can make a code on my own later today =)
You can check this JsFiddle to understand how to set the columns names