I love DataTables library and the infinite possibilities it offers. And I have been happily using it for years for small and medium projects. However, when working with large amounts of data, JavaScript handling of the entire data is just not possible. The official documentation talks of slowdowns when dealing with “many thousands or millions of data rows”. However, in practice, I have found that a few hundred is enough to cast a shadow on that perfect user experience we all aim for. So this is where the “Server-side processing” comes in handy. Instead of handling all data operations (fetch, sort, search, paging) on the client side, the DataTables library offers the possibility to perform these actions on the server side and return to the client only the relevant and visible data. The DataTables library has a server-side processing feature which allows the client to make an ajax call to the server with specific parameters and then render the response. This tutorial explains one way of handling this server processing in Symfony.