The HTML5 export buttons plug-in for Buttons provides four export buttons:

copyHtml5 - Copy to clipboard

csvHtml5 - Save to CSV file

excelHtml5 - Save to XLSX file - requires JSZip

pdfHtml5 - Save to PDF file - requires PDFMake

The copyHtml5 and csvHtml5 buttons have the option to specify the character (or more generally a full string) that separates the values between fields. By default this is a tab character for the copy button, but the Comma Separated Values button uses a comma.

All of the data export buttons have a exportOptions option which can be used to specify information about what data should be exported and how. The options given for this parameter are passed directly to the buttons.exportData() method to obtain the required data.

One of the most commonly used is the columns option which defines the columns that should be used as part of the export. This is given as a column-selector, making it simple to tell it if you want only visible columns, or a mix of the columns available.

The Excel export button saves to an XLSX file and the data can be customized before exporting the file using the customize method of the excelHtml5 button type.

It can often be useful to include description text in the print view to provide summary information about the table that will be included in the generated PDF. The message option of the pdfHtml5 button type provides this ability.

The page size and orientation of the pdfHtml5 button type can be set using the orientation and pageSize options. By default these values are portrait and A4, but are easily customized as shown in this example which uses a landscape layout and US legal paper size.

The PDFs created through the pdfHtml5 button type are generated through the PDFMake library which uses a declarative document structure to describe the PDF to be make in a simple to understand Javascript object.

Please refer to the PDFMaker documentation for full details of how the PDF can be customized.

Buttons uses the excellent FileSaver.js by Eli Grey in order to be able to create and download files on the client-side (i.e. for the CSV and Excel button types). Buttons' built in FileSaver.js is exposed via $.fn.dataTable.fileSave() when the HTML5 button types file is loaded, and it can be used to easily create your own custom files.