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

Question

Whenever I use , I get the following error:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property \'_DT_CellIndex\'

Answer 1

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

 Wide column
 
 


 Normal column
 Normal column
 Normal column

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.