[FIXED] Datatables search, filter, and export with Firebase

Issue

I have a CRUD app powered by angular. Recently I added datatables to it in order to search, filter, sort,export and hide columns using the power of datatables. Unfortunately it returns the Firebase references in the various columns {{contact.name}} {{contact.email}} (There are 4 more columns) when I use any datatables feature such as search it returns the Firebase reference instead of a field. Is there a way to fix this? I really need those datatable features at the same time use Firebase.

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('#contacts').DataTable( {
        dom: 'Bfrtip',
        buttons: [
            'copyHtml5',
            'excelHtml5',
            'csvHtml5',
            'pdfHtml5'
        ]
    } );
} );

<table id="contacts" class="table table-striped table-hover" >
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Name</th>
      <th>Phone</th>
      <th>Area</th>
      <th>Occupation</th>
      <th>E-mail</th>
      <th> Actions </th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr ng-repeat="contact in contacts">
      <td>{{contact.name}}</td>
      <td>{{contact.phone}}</td>
      <td>{{contact.area}}</td>
      <td>{{contact.work}}</td>
      <td>{{contact.email}}</td>
      <td><a href="#/edit/{{contact.$id}}" class="btn btn-raised btn-xs btn-warning">Edit</a> <a class="btn btn-raised btn-xs btn-danger" ng-click="removeContact(contact.$id)">Delete</a></td>

    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

EDIT

Will sourcing the data via ajax sort this out. This is the json format i get from the ajax GET request

{"-KIZ6VnucsKbKjlaE8aq":{"area":"Parklands","email":"tttt","name":"Mohammed Sohail","phone":"+254700000000","work":"ttt"},"-KId6OC2gOwiacUid9yK":{"area":"dfgdfg","email":"dfgdf","name":"dfg","phone":"dfgdfg","work":"fdfffffff"},"-KId6Rqo0B6w0jACHhWM":{"area":"dfgdfgdfgdf","email":"dfgdfgdfgdfg","name":"dfgfdgdf","phone":"gdfgdfgdfg","work":"gdfgdfgdfgdfg"},"-KIqmYZubPYhAqDqEyWo":{"area":"dfgfdg","email":"fgfdgfdgdf","name":"fgfg","phone":"fdgdg","work":"fgdfgdf"},"-KIqn5QABMXrTGoVgQv1":{"area":"bla","email":"weadasda","name":"bla","phone":"bla","work":"bla"}}

And this is how the data looks like on the console.

Any help to use data tables will be appriciated.

FireBase database image

Solution

So, this question is really about turning a (firebase) JSON object of objects with unknown object entry names such as KId6Rqo0B6w0jACHhWM into a more plain structure that can be used along with dataTables and ng-repeat?

You can format contacts into an array of plain objects this way :

$http.get('firebase.json').then(function(json) { //faked response from firebase
  $scope.contacts = []
  for (var item in json.data) {
    $scope.contacts.push(json.data[item]) 
  }
}) 

Now the ng-repeat will work and the markup (or contacts data) is understandable for dataTables. To turn this into angular-datatables (angular directives for jQuery dataTables) the only thing you need to do is to include the datatables dependency and include the datatable directive in the markup :

<table datatable="ng" class="table table-striped table-hover" >

demo -> http://plnkr.co/edit/tn9cuKa46vs4x8cHebjB?p=preview

Answered By – davidkonrad

Answer Checked By – Willingham (FixeMe Volunteer)