vue-displaytable

Vue-DisplayTable

A table component for Vue 3 designed with a modular structure for high customization and editing

Features

• Minimal and Modular Design: Designed with a modular structure and a minimal design, allowing you to add your own flavor to the code as well as emitting/passing any event/prop to any part of the table you desire
• Vue 3 Composition API + TypeScript: Follows the Vue 3 Composition API syntax for easy readability and TypeScript to maintain the code clean
• Sorting: It has a built-in sorting feature (using arr.sort()), which can be enabled by adding the optional column parameter sortable.

Installation

npm install vue-displaytable

Requirements

• Vue 3.3+
• Tailwind CSS 4 (optional, highly recommended, default styling uses Tailwind)

Quick Start & Examples

Quick Start: Populating the table statically

Import the TableMain component and its types TableColumn, TableData into your .vue file. Then fill the TableColumn array with the name of columns, and TableData array with objects that have key-value pairs corresponding to the TableColumn key values. An example of the basic usage is as follows:

<script setup lang="ts">
import { TableMain } from 'vue-displaytable';
import type { TableColumn, TableData } from 'vue-displaytable';

const columns: TableColumn[] = [
    { key: 'id', label: 'ID', width: '10%', sortable: true },
    { key: 'name', label: 'Name', width: '30%' },
    { key: 'email', label: 'Email', width: '40%' },
    { key: 'role', label: 'Role', width: '20%' sortable: false },
];

const data: TableData[] = [
    { id: 1, name: 'John Doe', email: '[e-mail]', role: 'Admin' },
    { id: 2, name: 'Jane Smith', email: '[e-mail]', role: 'User' },
];
</script>

<template>
    <TableMain :columns="columns" :data="data" />
</template>

Quick Start: Populating the Table dynamically

You can also populate the table dynamically using API responses. You have to make use of Vue's reactivity features to initialize a reactive array of TableData and then fill the array with the values you get from your API. Make sure the columns' keys in TableColumn array are same as the attributes you'd receive from your API!

<script setup lang="ts">
import { ref, onMounted } from 'vue';
import { TableMain } from 'vue-displaytable';
import type { TableColumn, TableData } from 'vue-displaytable';

const columns: TableColumn[] = [
    { key: 'id', label: 'ID', width: '10%', sortable: true },
    { key: 'name', label: 'Name', width: '30%', sortable: true },
    { key: 'email', label: 'Email', width: '40%' },
    { key: 'company', label: 'Company', width: '20%', sortable: true },
];

const users = ref<TableData[]>([]);
const loading = ref(true);

onMounted(async () => {
    try {
        const response = await fetch(
            'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users'
        );
        const data = await response.json();
        users.value = data.map((user: any) => ({
            id: user.id,
            name: user.name,
            email: user.email,
            company: user.company.name,
        }));
    } finally {
        loading.value = false;
    }
});
</script>

<template>
    <div v-if="loading">Loading...</div>
    <TableMain v-else :columns="columns" :data="users" />
</template>

Quick Start: Implementing extra functionality with slots

You can insert your own logic into the code by using slots (such as clickable cells that open a link, or an action button group of edit and delete buttons). For this you have to define a new column with a key. Then inside <TableMain></TableMain> tags, create a <template #cell-columnkey="{args}"></template> template tag, that refers to the key of the column. Inside the template tag, you can pass your own code, which be rendered using slots

Example usage:

<script setup lang="ts">
import TableMain from '../components/Table/components/TableMain.vue';
import type { TableColumn, TableData } from '../components/Table';

const actionSlotCols: TableColumn[] = [
    { key: 'id', label: 'EAN', sortable: true, width: '20%' },
    { key: 'name', label: 'Product Name', sortable: true, width: '40%' },
    { key: 'actions', label: 'Actions', sortable: false, width: '50%'}
];
const actionSlotData: TableData[] = [
    { id: 48234, name: 'Amazing Tool' },
    { id: 39534, name: 'Horrible Tool' },
];
</script>

<template>
    <TableMain :columns="actionSlotCols" :data="actionSlotData">
        <template #cell-id="{value}">  <!-- Clickable Link in the 'id' column -->
            <a :href="`${value}`" class="text-blue-500">
                {{value}}
            </a>
        </template>
        <template #cell-actions> <!-- Action Button Group in the 'actions' column -->
            <div class="flex gap-1">
                <button class="px-1 py-1 bg-blue-500 text-black rounded text-sm">
                    Edit
                </button>
                <button class="px-1 py-1 bg-red-500 text-black rounded text-sm">
                    Delete
                </button>
            </div>
        </template>
    </TableMain>
</template>

Props

TableMain

Prop	Type	Required	Description
columns	TableColumn[]	Yes	Array of column definitions
data	TableData[]	Yes	Array of row data objects

TableColumn Interface

interface TableColumn {
    key: string; // Unique identifier, matches data property
    label: string; // Display text for header
    sortable?: boolean; // Enable sorting
    width?: string; // Column width (it converts into a CSS style, e.g., '20%', '100px')
}

TableData Interface

interface TableData {
    [key: string]: any; // Flexible key-value pairs
}

Component Architecture

Vue-DisplayTable is designed completely modularly. Each part can be imported individually and used to your liking:

import {
    TableMain, // Main wrapper component
    TableHeader, // Table header (thead)
    TableHeaderCell, // Individual header cell (th)
    TableBody, // Table body (tbody)
    TableRow, // Individual row (tr)
    TableCell, // Individual cell (td)
} from 'vue-displaytable';

Styling

Vue-DisplayTable uses Tailwind CSS classes, albeit very minimal to not have any conflicting styles with your individual ones. To use the default styles, make sure that you have Tailwind 4 installed, otherwise the table may seem off.

Customizing Styles

You can override styles using Tailwind's utility classes or your own CSS. The components use standard HTML table elements (table, thead, tbody, tr, th, td).

Honorable Mentions to the DataTables Library

I've taken a huge inspiration by https://github.com/DataTables/DataTablesSrc while creating this library. At work I initially used DataTables for a project, after which I decided to make my own library to meet my project's individual needs. As I noticed that my own library strays far away from DataTables' design and principle (mainly the jQuery and Tailwind approach, Vue's reactivity approach compared to jQuery and some customization concerns I experienced), I've decided to open-source the code I've written.

License

MIT © fx-ntm