Tableize

Installation

First, install the gem

gem install tableize

In an initializer, include the Tableize module

ActionView::Base.send(:include, Tableize)

Usage

The simplest scenario

table_for Post, @posts do |t|
  t.column "Title", :title
  t.column "Author", :author
end

Is the same as

table_for Post, @posts do |t|
  t.columns :title, :author
end

Both examples generate the following html

<table class="posts">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th class="title string">Title</th>
            <th class="author string">Author</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr class="post_1">
            <td>Hello World!</td>
            <td>Christian Blais</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

Few defaults

• Inherited Resources

  By default, Tableize will search for both resource_class and collection methods. So you don't have to specify them each time, unless of course you want to override the default behavior. That being said, the following code produces the exact same output as the basic example above.

    table_for do |t|
        t.column "Title", :title
        t.column "Author", :author
    end
  

• I18n

  By default, Tableize will try to internationalise your attribute, so you don't have to name each of your column. So, assuming my model responds to human_attribute_name, the following example still produces the exact same output.

    table_for do |t|
        t.column :title
        t.column :author
    end
  

• Columns

  Tableize responds to defaults method, which will create a column for each public attribute of your model. Use it like this:

    table_for do |t|
      t.defaults
    end
  

• Multiple columns, one line

    table_for do |t|
      t.columns :title, :author
    end
  

Advanced features

• Lambdas

  You can use lambdas if you want to have a custom column.

    table_for do |t|
      t.column "Title" do |post|
        post.title + "!"
      end
    end
  

  You can also specify a method to be called before the yield.

    table_for do |t|
      t.column "Title", :title do |title|
        title + "!"
      end
    end
  

• Extras

  Let's say author is a relation, and you want to show his first name and last name as two separate columns. The following would works:

    table_for do |t|
      t.column "First name", :author do |author|
        author.first_name
      end
      t.column "Last name", :author do |author|
        author.last_name
      end
    end
  

  But the above code triggers the author method twice. In order to avoid that, you could use the extra method, which will be executed only once per row, yielding the result alongside the resource in each block. You can use more than one extra without any problem.

    table_for do |t|
      t.extra do |post|
        post.author
      end
  
      t.column "First name" do |post, author|
        author.first_name
      end
      t.column "Last name" do |post, author|
        author.last_name
      end
    end
  

• Hashes

  Tableize also accepts hashes instead of regular collections. Use it the same way.

    collection = [{:title => "Hello World", "author" => "Christian Blais"}]
  
    table_for Post, collection do |t|
      t.column :title
      t.column "author"
    end
  

Configuration

Tableize can me customized in an initializer.

Tableize::Configuration.configure do |config|
  [...]
end

Options

Here are the defaults used in the first example.

• table_options

  This option let you set default values for all your tables. It must be a lambda that returns a hash. The lambda receive one argument, which is the resource class, when available.

    config.table_options = lambda do |resource_class|
      {
        :class => "#{resource_class.model_name.tableize}"
      }
    end
  

• th_options

  This option let you set default values for all your th cells. It must be a lambda that returns a hash. The lambda receive two arguments; the field name and it's value type.

    config.th_options = lambda do |field, type|
      {
        :class => [field, type].compact.map{ |a| a.to_s.underscore }
      }
    end
  

• tr_options

  This option let you set default values for all your rows. It must be a lambda that returns a hash. The lambda receive the resource as a single argument.

    config.tr_options = lambda do |resource|
      {
        :class => "#{resource.class.model_name.underscore}_#{resource.id}"
      }
    end
  

Custom column

Let's suppose you are doing an admin section and that you always need a column to display the resource's name with a link to that resource's show page.

The following would work, but it's pretty long if you need to do that all the time.

table_for do |t|
  t.column "Title" do |resource|
    resource.title
  end
end

What about your own column type? In the configuration file, add this

config.custom_column :title, :html => {:class => "titleized"} do |column|
  column.th :class => "title_th" do |resource_class|
    resource_class.human_attribute_name(:title)
  end

  column.td :class => "title_td" do |resource|
    resource.title
  end
end

Having this in your configuration file, you can now do this

table_for do |t|
  t.title
end

This will produce the following html

<table class="posts titleized">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th class="title string title_th">Title</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr class="post_1">
            <td class="title_td">Hello World!</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>