Hierarchically group tables as in phpMyAdmin

[peter-gribanov]

My feature discussion on forum.

I would like to be able to group tables in list tables window like in phpMyAdmin.

NavigationTreeTableSeparator
Defines a string to be used to nest table spaces. This means if you have tables like first__second__third this will be shown as a three-level hierarchy like: first > second > third. If set to false or empty, the feature is disabled. NOTE: You should not use this separator at the beginning or end of a table name or multiple times after another without any other characters in between.

This is useful for grouping tables of different application modules.

For example, in the project i'm working on, there are 166 tables and they can be combined into at least 17 groups. In groups it is easier to navigate than in the list of tables.

A similar situation may arise if microservices store their tables in a common database. Why should i see the tables of someone else’s microservice?
I exaggerate the situation. Of course, it is correct to separate the microservice databases or at least make users limited rights. But a similar problem may arise in any large project.

Subgroups

It was also good to create subgroups for submodules.
This is not critical, but could also come in handy.
If this is difficult, then of course it's best to make only groups. Without subgroups, we will survive.

[ansgarbecker]

Does pma group objects by type, or does it have favorites, like HeidiSQL has? Does it have a database and table filter with regular expression support like in Heidi?

What I want to say is I doubt we need another way to group or to reduce the displaying of tables.

[peter-gribanov]

Does pma group objects by type

Yes. It has.

does it have favorites

Yes. It has.

Does it have a database and table filter with regular expression support like in Heidi?

Yes. It has.

You can try a demo on official site.

What I want to say is I doubt we need another way to group or to reduce the displaying of tables.

There are people for whom this is not enough. And i'm a not alone.

[peter-gribanov]

@ansgarbecker i would be very grateful if you implement this feature.

[olelasse]

I just want to add myself to the list of wanting this feature. I have monthly updates which includes 21 tables each month. On PHPMyAdmin, it was easy to explore and edit the tables if needed, as I only looked for "year_month__" and all 21 tables where grouped together under. Been doing this since 2015, and it is a looong list of tables if shown in total, and I have to use favorites to exclude the others, but I need to update this every month.

[alialtun14]

Does pma group objects by type, or does it have favorites, like HeidiSQL has? Does it have a database and table filter with regular expression support like in Heidi?

What I want to say is I doubt we need another way to group or to reduce the displaying of tables.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. Finally, I found a solution that is

• simple to implement
• practical to use
• doesn't bring extra complexity to the user interface.
• doesn't bring extra complexity to code base.

Solution is to add table comment data to table_filter select clause.

[felixpenrose]

I don't really see this being useful for table grouping personally, however I can see this feature being useful for the database level.
I work on multiple brands and each have their own database as well as having _live and _dev prefixes on them too. It would certainly improve the usability if it was possible to group the databases by these, especially in cases where the brand prefix is similar to another, it's a little harder to find the correct one at a glance.

[peter-gribanov]

@felixpenrose in your case, the group will consist of 2 elements. I’m not sure that this will especially help you. In my project, a table group can contain 2-100 elements. The benefit is more obvious. But i agree. In some projects, grouping databases can also be useful.

Hi,
I agree, that would be a very nice feature , wher you have a lot of tables, filtering is not as good as the folder group.
Thanks

[anders8]

I'm often working with two related but not name related sets of tables. For example
-customer table
-contact table

or
-item table
-inventory_stock table

And actually, each of these examples, there's not just one, but several related tables for each of those. So being able to open the "folders" in PMA of just those two, to see the four tables from one and 3 from the other, is handy.

Probably one main feature is that it lets you ignore more. That makes thinking simpler. ;) The real benefit is how many folders you can have closed and hidden, not how many you can show. 👍

[lukinhaspm]

I'm often working with two related but not name related sets of tables. For example
-customer table
-contact table

or
-item table
-inventory_stock table

And actually, each of these examples, there's not just one, but several related tables for each of those. So being able to open the "folders" in PMA of just those two, to see the four tables from one and 3 from the other, is handy.

Probably one main feature is that it lets you ignore more. That makes thinking simpler. ;) The real benefit is how many folders you can have closed and hidden, not how many you can show. 👍

It's look like for "modeling" schemas tool, but I like the idea... maybe mark table with custom TAGS, and you will find by this

[untuned]

I'd like to see this feature be added! I have a lot of databases that are prefixes with various things, and I'd like to be able to group them together like PMA does, where you have a button to show all databases that start with s1_ for example.

[Novelz]

+1 for adding this feature. It will be a dream coming true.

[stramin]

In my company, we group all our tables by module using underscores, which makes them really easy to navigate.

We are now moving to something serverless (Amazon Aurora on RDS), and we have to say goodbye to PhpMyAdmin and switch to DB clients like HeidiSQL. Unfortunately, we haven’t found any DB client that can group tables like PhpMyAdmin does.

Please, make this feature possible!