Programmatically search a table with jQuery DataTables

Question

I am using jQuery DataTables 1.10.9 and jQuery 1.8.3. I'm trying to programmatically search in that, but without success.

I already tried:

function applyFilter(filter) {
    $("#dataTable").filter(filter);
}

and

function applyFilter(filter) {
    $("#dataTable").fnFilter(filter);
}

Answer 1

Use search() API method to perform the search, see the code below:

function applyFilter(filter) {
    $('#dataTable').DataTable().search(filter).draw();
}

Answer 2

$("#dataTable").dataTable().fnFilter('something')