# DataTables example Data rendering

Data within DataTables can be easily rendered to add graphics or colour to your tables, as demonstrated in the example on this page. These examples make use of `columns.render` to customise the cells in three ways:

- A flag is added to the Office column
- a HTML5 progress bar is added to the Progress column
- and the built-in number renderer is used for format the Salary.

See the data rendering manual page for more details on how to use data renderers. Also, this example uses Ajax to load the data. More Ajax examples are available.

Name | Position | Office | Progress | Start date | Salary
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Name | Position | Office | Progress | Start date | Salary

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

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

`$(document).ready(function() { $('#example').DataTable({ ajax: '../ajax/data/objects_salary.txt', columns: [ { data: 'name' }, { data: 'position' }, { className: 'f32', // used by world-flags-sprite library data: 'office', render: function(data, type) { if (type === 'display') { var country = ''; switch (data) { case 'Argentina': country = 'ar'; break; case 'Edinburgh': country = '_Scotland'; break; case 'London': country = '_England'; break; case 'New York': case 'San Francisco': country = 'us'; break; case 'Sydney': country = 'au'; break; case 'Tokyo': country = 'jp'; break; } return '<span class="flag ' + country + '"></span> ' + data; } return data; } }, { data: 'extn', render: function(data, type, row, meta) { return type === 'display' ? '<progress value="' + data + '" max="9999"></progress>' : data; } }, { data: "start_date" }, { data: "salary", render: $.fn.dataTable.render.number( ',', '.', 2, '$' ) } ] }); });`

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

- https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.js
- ../../media/js/jquery.dataTables.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:

`.f32 .flag { vertical-align: middle; margin: -8px 0; } progress { width: 100%; }`

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

- ../../media/css/jquery.dataTables.css
- https://github.com/downloads/lafeber/world-flags-sprite/flags32.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.