toolbar option to hide/show columns w/ cookie support

[goodale]

While it is possible to programmatically hide or show a column, there doesn't appear to be a UI component that provides the end-user the option to select which columns should be visible. I'm seeking a feature which provides this functionality. Requirements are similar to the (ancient) ExtJS/Sencha data grid control from many years ago:

• Renders a drop-down widget at the rightmost edge of the header row.
• Clicking the widget displays a list of all columns, with a checkbox beside each column
• Toggling the check boxes hides or shows the respective column
• Column visibility should 'honored' by the Export extension so that PDF, Excel and other exported files of the data only include the visible columns
• The user's selections should be 'sticky' via cookies so when the same table is rendered during a future session the column preferences are remembered.

This feature, once a standard component of ExtJS, seems to be missing from all of the various data table libraries. It would be very advantageous of DataTables supported it, possibly via an extension. End-users interacting with tables with a large number of columns would be able to more easily customize what they see and not have to export to Excel and then delete columns every time they export.

[AllanJard]

Like this? More examples here.

Column visibility should 'honored' by the Export extension

Set the columns option for the export buttons to be :visible.

The user's selections should be 'sticky' via cookies

Example here.

DataTables hasn't used cookies for state storing for many years. It uses localStorage by default, sessionStorage as an option. If you need a cookie, then use the state saving options of DataTables core to use cookies instead.