javascript - How to use rowspan and colspan in tbody using datatable.js?

Question

Whenever I use <td colspan="x"></td>, I get the following error:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property '_DT_CellIndex' of undefined(…)

Demo

$("table").DataTable({});

<link href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/datatables/1.10.12/css/jquery.dataTables.min.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.2.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/datatables/1.10.12/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js"></script>

<table style="width:50%;">
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>1</th>
      <th>2</th>
      <th>3</th>
      <th>4</th>
      <th>5</th>
      <th>6</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>1</td>
      <td>2</td>
      <td>3</td>
      <td>4</td>
      <td>5</td>
      <td>6</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>1</td>
      <td colspan="2">3 4</td>
      <td colspan="3">4 5 6</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27290693/how-to-use-rowspan-and-colspan-in-tbody-using-datatable-js

Answer 1

You can hack around the lack of colspan support by adding an "invisible" cell for every cell that's eliminated:

<tr>
 <td colspan="3">Wide column</td>
 <td style="display: none;"></td>
 <td style="display: none;"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>Normal column</td>
 <td>Normal column</td>
 <td>Normal column</td>
</tr>

DataTables doesn't complain, the table renders normally and sorting works (invisible columns sort as the empty string).

I haven't tried this with rowspan.