Flask-Table 0.2.7

Flask Table

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

Quick Start

# 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:

<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>

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:

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:

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.

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

which is equivalent to

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.

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.