Can javascript sort, filter, and render a very large table?

Question

First of all, I have no idea of Javascript's capability on this. But would like to know if it is possible:

1. To read from a text file and display a very large table (a couple dozens of columns and a few hundred thousands of rows), in sections;
2. Not all columns will displayed in the same time. columns are in groups. a group of columns needs to toggle between hidden or show;
3. rows can be filtered based on certain columns.

The reason to do this is to make a report that displays data analysis results and also provides basic filter, sorting functions for the user. They most likely to have some sort of web browser. So HTML would be an ideal format.

Is it possible with Javascript?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You might be able to do this by using a grid plugin. For example, have at look at the answers to this question: JavaScript data grid for millions of rows

Answer 2

I would recommend a javascript table library such as DataTables. It includes sorting, filtering and pagination options.

Also it has functionality to hand off all the paging, filtering, sorting etc. that DataTables does to a server. The javascript lib DataTables then is just an events and display module. In this case, any number of rows can be handled.

So you would have all the functionality you need, with the ajax-y quick performance of the data loaded in javascript with the scale to handle any number of rows.

Server-side data processing with DataTables