Widget table helper for Rails

A table must first be created in your controller using the table_me method.

table_me(collection, options)

The collection can be two things, first an ActiveRecord::Relation, which is the result of some sort of active record query ex:

table_me( User.where(subscribed: true) )

Keep in mind that doing User.all just returns an array of objects, not the a relation.

In order to do the equivalent of the .all just pass in the ActiveRecord class:

table_me( User )

Possible options available for this method are:

name - Label for the the table per_page - The amount of items per page of the table

In your view you can create the table from the one initialized in the controller, the first parameter of table_for is the name set in table_me. By default the class name is used if a name isn't set.

table_for :user

Now, this will list all columns from the database in your table, which you may not always want to do. You can pass a block of columns to be more specific:

table_for :user do |t|
  t.column :id
  t.column :email
  t.column :created_at
end

This will give you a user table with the columns id, email, and created_at.

What if you want to customize the output of the column? Each column can also take a block of content:

table_for :user do |t|
  t.column :id
  t.column :email do |c|
    "<h1>c.email</h1>"
  end
  t.column :created_at
end

Now, when a block is used to alter the content of a column, the sorting is lost, since the table can no longer assume what is in the column. You need to set a sort_on param to tell the column what to sort by. For example:

table_for :user do |t|
  t.column :id
  t.column :email, sort_on: :email do |c|
    "<h1>c.email</h1>"
  end
  t.column :created_at
end

There is also a color highlighting helper called highlight_cell. So lets say that you want to have a visual que for if a user is an admin:

table_for :user do |t|
  t.column :id
  t.column :admin do |c|
    highlight_cell c.admin, green: true
  end
  t.column :created_at
end

This will put a green box around true in the column. But what if you want to change that true to the word 'Admin' and lets put a red box around all the non admins and make them say 'peons':

table_for :user do |t|
  t.column :id
  t.column :admin do |c|
    highlight_cell c.admin, green: [true, 'Admin'], red: [false, 'peon']
  end
  t.column :created_at
end

You can add basic filter fields to the table by using the filter method. Right now, only one filter can be applied and the filters are search fields. I would like to eventually add different types for different types of data. I would like to eventually add in the ability for multiple filter types with a single search button, but the basic form is all I need at the moment. Ajax enabled filtering would be freaking great as well.

Filter usage:

table_for :user do |t|
  t.filter :email
  t.filter :name
  t.column :id
  t.column :email 
  t.column :name
end

There is also a light theme, which can be switched by adding a class of 'light' to the table_for:

table_for :user, class: 'light'

This looks a little like this:

• I would like some sort of scope sorting built in.
• More advanced filtering other then just search fields. Multiple filters at one time.
• Ajax filters instead of having to reload the page. The url will still need to be modified so state can be preserved if the url is copy and pasted.
• The way queries are handled with the filter search is sloppy, it needs to be refactored.
• Tests need to be refactored pretty badly.