PHP Arrays with Datatables - php

Question

I have been playing around with datatables and now have a requirement to filter a table via select/dropdown which should filter one of my columns. My code is:
<?php
$urlPriority = $_GET['priority'];
if (empty($urlPriority)) {
$urlPriority = 'High';
}
$priorityStatus = array('Low'=>'Low Priority', 'Medium'=>'Medium Priority', 'High'=>'High Priority');
echo createSelectControl('Priority', $priorityStatus, $urlPriority, -1, false, 'reload();')
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
function reload() {
var priority = $("#Priority").val();
location.search = '?priority=' + priority;
}
</script>
I added the line of code to my sql query:
$sql = "SELECT * from [table_name]
WHERE ... AND
Priority = '" . mssql_escape($urlPriority) . "' AND
etc AND
etc ";
This works great when selecting one of the options.
All I need now is for the user to be able to select all options, including Low, Medium and High, I have tried all methods i can think of but it just returns an empty table?
Thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

Use this,
if($urlPriority!="")
{
//query with priority filter
}
else
{
//query without priority filter
}
if user select priority value assign it to $urlPriority, else make it empty. then it will retrieve every result

Answer 2

Found a solution which does exactly what i needed, thought i'd share the JSFiddle
initComplete: function() {
var column = this.api().column(2);
var select = $('<select class="filter"><option value=""></option></select>')
.appendTo('#selectTriggerFilter')
.on('change', function() {
var val = $(this).val();
//column.search(val ? '^' + $(this).val() + '$' : val, true, false).draw();
column.search(val).draw()
});
var offices = [];
column.data().toArray().forEach(function(s) {
s = s.split(',');
s.forEach(function(d) {
if (!~offices.indexOf(d)) {
offices.push(d)
select.append('<option value="' + d + '">' + d + '</option>'); }
})
})
}
http://jsfiddle.net/m1Ly9uxf/15/