Heerschable Table¶ ↑

The Heerschable Table plugin provides a simple way for creating sortable tables. It is slightly based on the Thoughtbot sortable table plugin.

Installation¶ ↑

script/plugin install git://github.com/dkln/heerschable_table.git

And done!

Basic usage¶ ↑

Specify in your controller which columns you want to sort. This can be achieved by using the sortable_column class method:

class FooBar < ActionController::Base
  sortable_columns :name, :id, :updated_at, :email

  def index
    @users = User.find(:all, :order => sorting)
  end

Use the method sorting if you want to retrieve the current column plus sort method.

Alias¶ ↑

You can alias columns by ommiting a simple hash:

sortable_columns :name, :mail => 'email'

Rendering table headers¶ ↑

With the helper table_header you can render your table headers.

table_header 'Fullname', :name
table_header 'Updated at', :updated_at
table_header 'Email address', :mail

Ajax tables¶ ↑

Ajax tables are more fun than boring simple tables. Why? because you don’t need a page refresh and it just “feels” much more responsive.

As always in Rails, it is a bit of a no brainer. If we would have a bunch of users, we could do something like this in index.html.haml:

= render(:partial => 'users')

And in _users.html.haml:

#users
  %table
    %tr
      = table_header 'Fullname', :name, :update => 'users'
      = table_header 'Email address', :mail, :update => 'users'

And finally, in your controller:

def index
  @users = User.find(:all, :order => sorting)

  respond_to do |f|
    f.html
    f.js { render(:partial => 'users') }
  end
end

Done!

Default columns¶ ↑

If you have a default column in your table, do this:

default_sorted_column :name => 'asc'

This means that the name column will be sorted by default. The default sort method for this column is ascending.

You can also specify default column sorting methods for every column in your table:

default_sorted_column :name => 'asc, :email => 'desc'

Remember that the first ommited key (name in this example) will be the default sorting for the table when an user enters the page.

More than one table?¶ ↑

Is there more than one table on your page? No worries. Just specify a table id

sortable_columns :name, :updated_at, :id => 'users'
default_sorted_column :name => 'asc', :id => 'users'

sortable_columns :description, :code, :id => 'activities'

..

@users = User.find(:all, :order => sorting(:users)

In your view you will now need to specify the correct id:

= table_header 'Fullname', :name, { :update => 'users' }, 'users'

Credits¶ ↑

Use it, send it to your mom, throw it away or extend it will cool new stuff. Just stick to the rules of the MIT license :)

Copyright © 2009 Diederick Lawson, released under the MIT license