Flask Table
===========

Because writing HTML is fiddly and all of your tables are basically the
same.

Quick Start
===========

.. code:: python

    # import things
    from flask_table import Table, Col

    # Declare your table
    class ItemTable(Table):
        name = Col('Name')
        description = Col('Description')

    # Get some objects
    class Item(object):
        def __init__(self, name, description):
            self.name = name
            self.description = description
    items = [Item('Name1', 'Description1'),
             Item('Name2', 'Description2'),
             Item('Name3', 'Description3')]
    # Or, equivalently, some dicts
    items = [dict(name='Name1', description='Description1'),
             dict(name='Name2', description='Description2'),
             dict(name='Name3', description='Description3')]

    # Or, more likely, load items from your database with something like
    items = ItemModel.query.all()

    # Populate the table
    table = ItemTable(items)

    # Print the html
    print(table.__html__())
    # or just {{ table }} from within a Jinja template

Which gives something like:

.. code:: html

    <table>
    <thead><tr><th>Name</th><th>Description</th></tr></thead>
    <tbody>
    <tr><td>Name1</td><td>Description1</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Name2</td><td>Description2</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Name3</td><td>Description3</td></tr>
    </tbody>
    </table>

Extra things:
-------------

-  The attribute used for each column in the declaration of the column
   is used as the default thing to lookup in each item.

-  The thing that you pass when you populate the table must:
-  be iterable
-  contain dicts or objects - there's nothing saying it can't contain
   some of each

-  There are also LinkCol and ButtonCol that allow links and buttons,
   which is where the Flask-specific-ness comes in.

-  There are also DateCol and DatetimeCol that format dates and
   datetimes.

-  Oh, and BoolCol, which does Yes/No.

-  But most importantly, Col is easy to subclass.

Subclassing Col
===============

(Look in examples/subclassing.py for a more concrete example)

Suppose our item has an attribute, but we don't want to output the value
directly, we need to alter it first. If the value that we get from the
item gives us all the information we need, then we can just override the
td\_format method:

.. code:: python

    class LangCol(Col):
        def td_format(self, content):
            if content == 'en_GB':
                return 'British English'
            elif content == 'de_DE':
                return 'German'
            elif content == 'fr_FR':
                return 'French'
            else:
                return 'Not Specified'

If you need access to all of information in the item, then we can go a
stage earlier in the process and override the td\_contents method:

.. code:: python


    from flask import Markup

    def td_contents(self, i, attr_list):
        # by default this does
        # return self.td_format(self.from_attr_list(i, attr_list))
        return Markup.escape(self.from_attr_list(i, attr_list) + ' for ' + item.name)

At present, you do still need to be careful about escaping things as you
override these methods. Also, because of the way that the Markup class
works, you need to be careful about how you concatenate these with other
strings.

Dynamically Creating Tables
===========================

(Look in examples/dynamic.py for a more concrete example)

You can define a table dynamically too.

.. code:: python

    TableCls = create_table('TableCls')\
        .add_column('name', Col('Name'))\
        .add_column('description', Col('Description'))

which is equivalent to

.. code:: python

    class TableCls(Table):
        name = Col('Name')
        description = Col('Description')

but makes it easier to add columns dynamically.

Sortable Tables
===============

(Look in examples/sortable.py for a more concrete example)

Define a table and set its allow\_sort attribute to True. Now all
columns will be default try to turn their header into a link for
sorting, unless you set allow\_sort to False for a column.

You also must declare a sort\_url method for that table. Given a
col\_key, this determines the url for link in the header. If reverse is
True, then that means that the table has just been sorted by that column
and the url can adjust accordingly, ie to now give the address for the
table sorted in the reverse direction. It is, however, entirely up to
your flask view method to interpret the values given to it from this url
and to order the results before giving the to the table. The table
itself will not do any reordering of the items it is given.

.. code:: python

    class SortableTable(Table):
        name = Col('Name')
        allow_sort = True

        def sort_url(self, col_key, reverse=False):
            if reverse:
                direction =  'desc'
            else:
                direction = 'asc'
            return url_for('index', sort=col_key, direction=direction)

The Examples
============

The ``examples`` directory contains a few pieces of sample code to show
some of the concepts and features. They are all intended to be runnable.
Some of them just output the code they generate, but some (just one,
``sortable.py``, at present) actually creates a Flask app that you can
access.

You should be able to just run them directly with ``python``, but if you
have cloned the repository for the sake of dev, and created a
virtualenv, you may find that they generate an import error for
``flask_table``. This is because ``flask_table`` hasn't been installed,
and can be rectified by running something like
``PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:. python examples/simple.py``.

Also, if there is anything that you think is not clear and would be
helped by an example, please just ask and I'll happily write one. Only
you can help me realise which bits are tricky or non-obvious and help me
to work on explaining the bits that need explaining.

Other Things
============

At the time of first writing, I was not aware of the work of
Django-Tables. However, I have now found it and started adapting ideas
from it, where appropriate. For example, allowing items to be dicts as
well as objects.

.. |Build Status| image:: https://travis-ci.org/plumdog/flask_table.svg?branch=master
   :target: https://travis-ci.org/plumdog/flask_table
