Two related questions on jqGrid column header filters and the advanced filtering dialog

I find your question very interesting, so I prepared the demo which demonstrate how one can combine Advanced Searching dialog and Toolbar Searching in one grid.

One important, but simple trick is the usage of recreateFilter: true. Per default the searching dialog will be created once and then will be only hide or show. As the result the postData.filters parameter will be not refreshed. After setting recreateFilter: true the problem with filling of the advanced searching dialog with the values from the searching toolbar will be solved. I personally set the default searching options as the following

$.extend(
    $.jgrid.search,
    {
        multipleSearch: true,
        multipleGroup: true,
        recreateFilter: true,
        overlay: 0
    }
);

Now to more complex part of the solution is the function refreshSerchingToolbar which I wrote. The function is not so simple, but it's simply in use:

loadComplete: function () {
    refreshSerchingToolbar($(this), 'cn');
}

The last parameter is the same parameter which you used as defaultSearch property of the searching toolbar method filterToolbar (the default value is 'bw', but I personally prefer to use 'cn' and set jqGrid parameter ignoreCase: true).

If you fill the advanced searching dialog of the demo with the following field

and click the "Find" button, you will have the following grid:

(I marked the 'Total' column as non-searchable with respect of search: false to show only that all works correctly in the case also)

One can see that all fields of the searching toolbar excepting "Amount" are filled with the values from the searching dialog. The field are not filled because we used "grater or equal" operation instead of "equal". The function refreshSerchingToolbar fills only the elements of the searching toolbar which can be produced by the

Just as a reminder I should mention that in case of the usage of Filter Toolbar it is very important to define searchoptions.sopt options of the colModel. For all non-string column contains (dates, numbers, selects, int, currency) it is extremely important to have 'eq' as the first element of the sopt array. See here and here for details.

If you change the filter of the Advanced Dialog to the following

you will have as expected

At the end I include the code of the refreshSerchingToolbar function:

var getColumnIndex = function (grid, columnIndex) {
        var cm = grid.jqGrid('getGridParam', 'colModel'), i = 0, l = cm.length;
        for (; i < l; i += 1) {
            if ((cm[i].index || cm[i].name) === columnIndex) {
                return i; // return the colModel index
            }
        }
        return -1;
    },
    refreshSerchingToolbar = function ($grid, myDefaultSearch) {
        var postData = $grid.jqGrid('getGridParam', 'postData'), filters, i, l,
            rules, rule, iCol, cm = $grid.jqGrid('getGridParam', 'colModel'),
            cmi, control, tagName;

        for (i = 0, l = cm.length; i < l; i += 1) {
            control = $("#gs_" + $.jgrid.jqID(cm[i].name));
            if (control.length > 0) {
                tagName = control[0].tagName.toUpperCase();
                if (tagName === "SELECT") { // && cmi.stype === "select"
                    control.find("option[value='']")
                        .attr('selected', 'selected');
                } else if (tagName === "INPUT") {
                    control.val('');
                }
            }
        }

        if (typeof (postData.filters) === "string" &&
                typeof ($grid[0].ftoolbar) === "boolean" && $grid[0].ftoolbar) {

            filters = $.parseJSON(postData.filters);
            if (filters && filters.groupOp === "AND" && typeof (filters.groups) === "undefined") {
                // only in case of advance searching without grouping we import filters in the
                // searching toolbar
                rules = filters.rules;
                for (i = 0, l = rules.length; i < l; i += 1) {
                    rule = rules[i];
                    iCol = getColumnIndex($grid, rule.field);
                    cmi = cm[iCol];
                    control = $("#gs_" + $.jgrid.jqID(cmi.name));
                    if (iCol >= 0 && control.length > 0) {
                        tagName = control[0].tagName.toUpperCase();
                        if (((typeof (cmi.searchoptions) === "undefined" ||
                              typeof (cmi.searchoptions.sopt) === "undefined")
                             && rule.op === myDefaultSearch) ||
                                (typeof (cmi.searchoptions) === "object" &&
                                    $.isArray(cmi.searchoptions.sopt) &&
                                    cmi.searchoptions.sopt[0] === rule.op)) {

                            if (tagName === "SELECT") { // && cmi.stype === "select"
                                control.find("option[value='" + $.jgrid.jqID(rule.data) + "']")
                                    .attr('selected', 'selected');
                            } else if (tagName === "INPUT") {
                                control.val(rule.data);
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    };

UPDATED: The above code is no more needed in case of usage free jqGrid 4.13.1 or higher. It contains the new default option loadFilterDefaults: true of the filterToolbar, which refreshes the values of the filter toolbar and the filter operations (if searchOperators: true option of filterToolbar is ised) if postData.filters and search: true are set (the filter is applied). Free jqGrid refreshes the filter toolbar on jqGridAfterLoadComplete (if loadFilterDefaults: true are set) or if the event jqGridRefreshFilterValues are explicitly triggered.

I know it's an old post - but if you have multiple grids on the same page the above code can add the filter text to the wrong grid.

Changing this in the first loop in refreshSearchingToolbar, from

control = $("#gs_" + $.jgrid.jqID(cm[i].name));

to

control = $("#gview_"+$grid.attr('id')+" #gs_" + $.jgrid.jqID(cm[i].name));

and this in the second loop from

control = $("#gs_" + $.jgrid.jqID(cmi.name));

to

control = $("#gview_"+$grid.attr('id')+" #gs_" + $.jgrid.jqID(cmi.name));

should do the trick.

Kudos to Oleg