Easy Import, Extensive Customization, and great Ease of Use.

Hi,

thanks for your rating.

Now, as you gave four stars, I assume that you are missing something in the plugin, or that you are unhappy? Could you maybe explain that in more detail, so that I can try to find a solution, to maybe help TablePress earn a fifth star? Thanks!

Regards,
Tobias

Hey,

The plugin works great – no complaints there… in fact, I gave the 4 stars as soon as I used it for the very 1st time :)… the plugin works great, the only thing sorely missing is the documentation. I can help you write it if you are pressed for time, but some of the features need explaining is what I feel. e.g.

• Custom Commands: How to use it? (I figured it out eventually, but wont it be nice if we had a documentation for the same?)
• Hide/Show Columns: Why? If I dont want any columns, I can just delete it. Need to illustrate some use cases wherein this might come in handy maybe?

We can also build a few easy customizations, which would make this plugin best suited for even a wider range of applications. Again, I’m ready to help you all I can :).

Hi,

thanks for the further explanations!

I see your points, but I think the current handling is justified:

TablePress has a documention for its “own” features at https://tablepress.org/documentation/
This does indeed not really cover the “Custom Commands” field, as that can be used for adding/changing advanced functionality from the DataTables JS library only. Thus, it requires a little bit of coding, with commands that you have found in the actual DataTables Documentation at https://www.datatables.net/ (to which there is a link right below the text field). It would simply not be justified to copy all of that over to the TablePress Documentation, as it simply is a different product that’s just used as one part of TablePress.

Showing/Hiding columns: This is actually a fairly widely used feature. It for example allows people to draft data in their table, without already having to show it to the site visitors. Also, many users import tables e.g. from Excel, where those tables might have information in them that they don’t want to show. In that case, they could of course delete it, but then they are for example using the “Import” feature with the “Replace existing table” option. They would then have to delete that data everytime again, from which they are saved with the Hide feature.
Another use cases would be to add more “internal” data to a record in a table, like an internal rating or whatever. Some people also put special filter terms (for the Row Filter Extension from https://tablepress.org/extensions/row-filter/ ) into hidden columns.
So, trust me, there are valid use cases for this, and people are using the feature ??

Do those explanations make sense?

And thanks for offering help, I really appreciate it! Don’t forget that TablePress is open source, and everything is on Github at https://github.com/TobiasBg/TablePress , waiting for your improvements ??

Regards,
Tobias

Hi Tobias,

Did I tell you how awesome you are? ??

I agree when you say DataTables Documentation is redundant and hence not required in TablePress. What I meant was, it would be good to have an example of how to use the ‘Custom Command’ feature. To elaborate, if I want to hide a particular row, how to key in the DataTable code into the Custom Code field. It took me some time to figure it out, since it’s a single line entry. Also, am not too sure if you can pass a callback parameter using the custom code field? If only some of the parameters are supported, then it would be good to have a list of those in the documentation.

I never disputed the presence of valid use cases of the show/hide feature, as my guess would be that it was put there after people requested for it :-). I just thought it would be good to have a documentation on how it can prove useful on different scenarios, or when people can use this feature. Don’t know if it makes sense to you?

Thanks for making this plugin open source, I have already made changes to the plugin, so you can say I have started on the improvements already ??

If you need help with anything at all, please do get in touch with me at [email protected]. Do drop by my site if you can – it’s https://www.arnabdesigns.in

Cheers and Thanks for Everything!

Hi,

yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll try to add some examples to the Documentation and FAQ in the new future, when I’ll update the Docs again.

Callback parameters should also be possible, but would be more tricky, as everything needs to be in one line. Therefore, for larger chunks of codes or Custom Commands, it’s usually better to create a small custom TablePress Extension.

Thanks again for your great feedback and the code improvements!

Best wishes,
Tobias