Datatables : Make a parallel request in another table using ServerSide - mysql

Question

EDIT : I found the solution by replacing the SSP class by a customized SSP class I've found here : https://github.com/emran/ssp
I don't know if it's an understandable title, but here is my problem :
I have a DB-table (called projects) that needs to be inserted in a datatable. I've no problem to make a call using ServerSide and get results in the datatable.
But, for each project (each row), there is a project creator (column creator_id in the projects DB-table). What I need to do is to make a request to the creators DB-table in order to get the firstname/lastname of the creator, each time I get a row from the projects DB-table. Is that make sense?
Here is the code I use :
$table = 'projects';
$primaryKey = 'project_id';
$columns = array(
array(
'db' => 'project_id',
'dt' => 'DT_RowId',
'formatter' => function( $d, $row ) {
return $d;
}
),
array( 'db' => 'creator_id',
'dt' => 'creator',
'formatter' => function( $d, $row ) {
// Here I need to make a call to the creators DB-table and return the $creator_name value
return $creator_name;
}
)
);
// SQL server connection information
$sql_details = array(
'user' => '',
'pass' => '',
'db' => '',
'host' => ''
);
require(BASE_DIR.'/lib/dataTables/ssp.class.php');
$result = SSP::simple($_GET, $sql_details, $table, $primaryKey, $columns);

Answer 1

You can use formatter property to make a separate SQL query but it will affect performance greatly by increasing script response time.
Instead you can use the following trick when using ssp.class.php with sub-queries instead of table name to use GROUP BY, JOIN, etc.
<?php
$table = <<<EOT
(
SELECT projects.project_id, creators.creator_id, creators.creator_name
FROM projects
LEFT JOIN creators ON projects.creator_id=creators.creator_id
) t
EOT;
$primaryKey = 'project_id';
$columns = array(
array(
'db' => 'project_id',
'dt' => 'DT_RowId'
),
array(
'db' => 'creator_id',
'dt' => 'creator'
),
array(
'db' => 'creator_name',
'dt' => 'creator_name'
)
);
// SQL server connection information
$sql_details = array(
'user' => '',
'pass' => '',
'db' => '',
'host' => ''
);
require(BASE_DIR.'/lib/dataTables/ssp.class.php');
$result = SSP::simple($_GET, $sql_details, $table, $primaryKey, $columns);
echo json_encode($result);
To use that trick, you also need to edit ssp.class.php and replace all instances of FROM `$table` with FROM $table to remove backticks.
Alternatively, there is github.com/emran/ssp repository for library that extends ssp.class.php allowing GROUP BY, JOIN, aliases.
LINKS
See jQuery DataTables: Using WHERE, JOIN and GROUP BY with ssp.class.php for more information.