Cannot reinitialise DataTable - dynamic data for datatable

In the current version of DataTables (1.10.4) you can simply add destroy:true to the configuration to make sure any table already present is removed before being re-initialised.

$('#example').dataTable({    destroy: true,    aaData: response.data});

This tech note section from datatables explains the reason for this warning. Relevant information from there:

This error is triggered by passing in options to a DataTables constructor object when the DataTable instance for the selected node has already been initialised. For example:

$('#example').dataTable( {    paging: false} );$('#example').dataTable( {    searching: false} );

The above documentation explains two ways to deal with this.

1. Retrieve: It explains how to apply additional options after the initialization (works even if it is not initialized before) by using setting retrieve to true as follows:

table = $('#example').DataTable( {    retrieve: true,    paging: false} );

2. Destroy: In this case you can destroy the object explicitly by calling table.destroy(); and then creating the table again. Or you can simply pass destroy: true option as mentioned in the accepted answer.

   table = $('#example').DataTable( {    paging: false} );table.destroy();table = $('#example').DataTable( {    searching: false} );

Using destroy:true option:

$('#example').DataTable( {    destroy: true,    searching: false } );

Note: This error may also occur if you include your javascript file that creates the dataTable multiple times. I was using apache tiles and included it in base as well as extended definition which also resulted in this error.

This helped me:

var table = $('#example').DataTable( {    // Clear previous data    destroy: true,    // Load new data with AJAX from data.json file.    ajax: "data.json" } );