How to perform a real time search and filter on a HTML table

I created these examples.

Simple indexOf search

var $rows = $('#table tr');
$('#search').keyup(function() {
    var val = $.trim($(this).val()).replace(/ +/g, ' ').toLowerCase();

    $rows.show().filter(function() {
        var text = $(this).text().replace(/\s+/g, ' ').toLowerCase();
        return !~text.indexOf(val);
    }).hide();
});

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/7BUmG/2/

Regular expression search

More advanced functionality using regular expressions will allow you to search words in any order in the row. It will work the same if you type apple green or green apple:

var $rows = $('#table tr');
$('#search').keyup(function() {

    var val="^(?=.*\\b" + $.trim($(this).val()).split(/\s+/).join('\\b)(?=.*\\b') + ').*$',
        reg = RegExp(val, 'i'),
        text;

    $rows.show().filter(function() {
        text = $(this).text().replace(/\s+/g, ' ');
        return !reg.test(text);
    }).hide();
});

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/dfsq/7BUmG/1133/

Debounce

When you implement table filtering with search over multiple rows and columns it is very important that you consider performance and search speed/optimisation. Simply saying you should not run search function on every single keystroke, it’s not necessary. To prevent filtering to run too often you should debounce it. Above code example will become:

$('#search').keyup(debounce(function() {
    var val = $.trim($(this).val()).replace(/ +/g, ' ').toLowerCase();
    // etc...
}, 300));

You can pick any debounce implementation, for example from Lodash _.debounce, or you can use something very simple like I use in next demos (debounce from here): http://jsfiddle.net/7BUmG/6230/ and http://jsfiddle.net/7BUmG/6231/.