I have been developing a new custom node called ui-tabulator for dashboard v2.0, and about to release a beta version shortly. Following is a short summary of the node’s functionality & configuration options. I welcome comments, ideas & suggestions before I publish it on GitHUb.
Note: the node comes in addition to, not replacing, dashboard v2.0’s native vue-based table node.
ui-tabulator
The ui-tabulator custom node serves as a container for the popular Tabulator JavaScript package, for presentation & management of UI tables. The node follows the concept of the ui-table node of dashboard v1.0, but with significantly richer functionality.
At the moment, the node exposes a basic set of capabilities out of the vast feature-set of tabulator. As we move forward, the node can evolve to expose more tabulator capabilities, according to feedback from the user community.
General Overview
- The node serves as a smart wrapper containing a Tabulator (table) object. For the most part, it calls the Tabulator API as-is (as defined in the Tabulator Documentation).
- The node enables automatic instantiation of the table (with user-defined configuration & initial data), as well as dynamic table create/destroy in runtime.
- Interface to the node is through messages (regular Node-red msg objects). The msg specifies a command, and returns the table’s response
- In addition, the node can send unsolicited event messages for selected table events (on-create, on-change etc.)
Note: Messages sent to the node are gauranteed to return unchanged (except for payload with returned data and an error property in case of failure). This allows calling the tabulator node from link-call nodes. However, if events are enabled, they need to be side-tracked and bypass the link-return node (as they do not have a caller return address)
- In addition to messaging, there is an option to call the table object API directly from other template nodes, in case the required functionality cannot be sent in a message (for example: setting a conditional-formatting expression, which cannot be serialized into a message without breaching security).
- By default, the table operates in shared mode, i.e. multiple concurrent clients see the same data image. In this mode, a snapshot of the current table data is retained in the Node-red datastore, and reloaded upon browser open, refresh etc.
The node also supports a Multi-User mode, which allows per-client table-data & messaging.
Node Configuration
The node configuration properties (in the editor):
- Name, Group, Size: - same as in all dashboard nodes
- Initial Table Configuration: JSON object with all table & column definitions, and (optional) initial data
- Notifications: selection of table events to be sent
- Multi-user mode: (Y/N)
- CSS theme: selection of a tabulator theme (light, dark etc.)
- Table Id: optional unique Id for getting direct API access to the tabulator object from other dashboard template nodes
- Pass through message from input: will forward the incoming message as-is to the output port, in addition to the node’e response
Supported Commands
- General: createTable, destroyTable, saveToDatastore, clearDatastore
- Data update: setData, replaceData, updateData, addData, updateOrAddData, addRow, updateRow, deleteRow, updateOrAddRow, clearData
- Data Retrieval: getData, getDataCount, getRow, searchData, getSelectedData,
- Table Appearance: setStyle(cell/row/column/table), showColumn, setSort, setFilter, getFilters, addFilter, removeFilter, clearFilter
- Misc: selectRow, deselectRow, download
Note: It is possible to call additional, read-only tabulator APIs beyond the ones listed above. However, they will fail if their returned data is not serializable into the returned msg
Supported Events
- tableBuilt, tablePreDestroy, tableDestroyed
- rowClick, rowDblClick, rowTap, rowDblTap, rowTapHold
- rowAdded, rowUpdated, rowDeleted
- cellClick, cellDblClick, cellTap, cellDblTap, cellTapHold
- cellEdited
- dataChanged, dataFiltered
Node Dependencies
- Node-JS version >= 18
- Node-red version >= 3.10
- Node-red dashboard 2.0, version >= 1.6.0
- Tabulator version >= 6.2 (comes bundled in the node installation)
