DataGridField

Table of contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• How to use
  • Field definition
  • Widget definition
  • Columns definition
  • Usage examples
• Notes
• Known bugs
• Demo
• References
• Contributors
• Sponsorship

Released under the GNU General Public License

A table input component for the Plone Archetypes framework. Uses JavaScript to make entering tabular data more user friendly process - there are no round trip HTTP requests to the server when inserting or deleting rows.

Features

• Any number of columns set by a developer
• Any number of rows filled by a user
• Insert and deleting rows without submitting a form
• Many different column types

Requirements

• Plone 4 (for Plone 3, use the latest release in the 1.7 branch or 1.6 branch, for Plone 2.5, use the latest release in the 1.6 branch)
• A browser with JavaScript support. There isn't yet graceful degradation for browsers without JavaScript.

Installation

This version of DataGridField is distributed as an egg at the Python Package index. Information about configuring either for a zope instance house a Plone site can be found by reading the Installing an Add-on Product tutorial.

Once you've succesfully done this, you can use the Add/Remove Products screen to install the DataGridField into your site. See below for information about experimenting with the demo types.

How to use

When developing an Archetypes content type you will be able to add a new kind of field: the DataGridField. Low level data stored inside this field will be a Python tuple of dicts.

The widget used for this new type of field is the DataGridWidget.

Field definition

Follow a list of all DataGridField configurations:

columns

A tuple of all columns ids. Default is a single column named "default".

fixed_rows

A sequence of FixedRow instances that are row values that must exists. If those rows are deleted, they will be re-added when saving the content.

See examples in the code for implementation details.

allow_insert

User can append new rows. Currently is only an UI feature, this is not yet checked at application level. Default is True.

allow_delete

User can delete rows. This is currently UI feature, this is not yet checked at application level. Default is True.

allow_reorder

User can reorder rows. This is currently UI feature, this is not yet checked at application level. Default is True.

searchable

If true all the contents of the DataGridField is concatenated to searchable text and given to text indexer. Default is False.

allow_empty_rows

Set to false to allow empty rows in the data. Default is True.

allow_oddeven

Set to true to hifhligh odd/even rows in edit/view form. Default is False

Widget definition

When defining a new DataGridWidget you can manage following options:

show_header

Choose to display or not table headers in view or edit.

auto_insert

Automatically add new rows when the last row is being edited.

columns

A dict containing columns definition.

This option is not required, but you must provide it for advanced datagrid configuration (see below).

Columns definition

When defining columns (using the columns option in the widget definition above) you must provide a dict composed by:

• a key that must be found in the columns definition of field.
• a Column class (or subclass) instance

Every Column instance have following options:

label (required)

The pretty label for the column.

col_description

Additional description for the column scope

default

Default value for every new value of the column

default_method

Like default above, but instead of a static value it must be an attribute for a method that can be called on the context (similar to the default_method of Archetypes fields)

visible

Define if the column will be visible. Default is True.

required

If true, for every provided row, values in this columns must be filled. Default is False.

Apart the simple Column implementation, this product will provide additional kind of columns classes like:

• SelectColumn
• LinesColumn
• LinkColumn
• RadioColumn
• ...

Please refer to the source code for a complete list of columns and details of additional options.

Usage examples

Simple example with three free text columns:

schema = BaseSchema + Schema((

DataGridField('DemoField',
        widget = DataGridWidget(),
        columns=('column1','column2','The third')
        ),
))

Complex example with different column types and user friendly labels:

# Plone imports
from Products.Archetypes.public import DisplayList
from Products.Archetypes.public import *

# Local imports
from Products.DataGridField import DataGridField, DataGridWidget
from Products.DataGridField.Column import Column
from Products.DataGridField.SelectColumn import SelectColumn

class DataGridDemoType(BaseContent):
    """A simple archetype

    """

    schema = BaseSchema + Schema((
        DataGridField('DemoField',
                searchable = True,
                columns=("column1", "column2", "select_sample"),
                widget = DataGridWidget(
                    columns={
                        'column1' : Column("Toholampi city rox",
                                           col_description="Go Toholampi or go home.",
                                           required=True),
                        'column2' : Column("My friendly name"),
                        'select_sample' : SelectColumn("Friendly name", vocabulary="getSampleVocabulary")
                    },
                 ),
         ),

        ))

    def getSampleVocabulary(self):
        """
        """
        """ Get list of possible taggable features from ATVocabularyManager """
        return DisplayList(

            (("sample", "Sample value 1",),
            ("sample2", "Sample value 2",),))

For more examples, see unit test code.

Notes

Since DataGridField 1.5, if you wish to retain old way of automatic row inserting. Here is a bit logic behind all this - otherwise there will be an extra row added when you edit DGF and press save.

• You must set property auto_insert = True to DataGridWidget
• You must set property allow_empty_rows = False to DataGridField

Known bugs

• Sometimes on Firefox column sizes start changing after the user enters some data. Not sure if this is a Firefox bug, though.
• Prefilled default values work only for text and select columns
• Radio button and link column postback is not handled properly. This needs fixes very deep into Zope (ZPublisher). If the form validation fails, link column and radio button columns lost their values.
• Not all types of columns are supported by all browsers because of HTML incompatibilities. See http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_input.asp for details.

Demo

A demo type is included. It is disabled by default. This type is neither pretty nor very functional, but demonstrates how a data grid should be used. You can install this type into your site by running the "DataGridField (Example DGF content types)" from the Generic Setup tool within the ZMI.

References

• Custom Search product uses DataGridField for editing search form query fields.
• London School of Marketing uses DataGridField extensively

Contributors

People who have been making this true:

• Mikko Ohtamaa, Red Innovation
• Danny Bloemendaal
• Radim Novotny
• Justin Ryan
• Alexander Limi
• PloneSolutions <info@plonesolutions.com>
• Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net>
• Paul Everitt, Zope Europe Association <paul@zope-europe.org>
• Development was helped by Vincent Bonamy
• Maurits van Rees
• Andreas Jung
• T Kim Nguyen <nguyen@uwosh.edu>

Original concept and prototype:

• Geir Baekholt, Plone Solutions <info@plonesolutions.com>
• Paul Everitt, Zope Europe Association <paul@zope-europe.org>

Sponsorship

Organizations paying up for the development:

• London School of Marketing
• United Nations Environment Programme