Clipboard
Overview
The clipboard module provides a range of functions that allow data to be copied out of the table into the clipboard and to be pasted into the table from the clipboard.
You can enable clipboard functionality using the clipboard config option. It can take one of four possible values:
- true - enable clipboard copy and paste
- "copy" - enable only copy functionality
- "paste" - enable only paste functionality
- false - disable all clipboard functionality (default)
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboard:true, //enable clipboard functionality
});
Copying Data
If the table has focus, the copyToClipboard keybinding which is by default set to the ctrl + c key combination, will trigger a copy of table to the clipboard, which data is copied depends on the state of the table.
More information on how to configure this option can be found in the Keybindings Documentation
When copying data out of the table, the raw row data will be formatted to match the current order of the columns in the table. Row data in columns that are not currently visible will not be copied to the clipboard.
Trigger Copy Programmatically
The copyToClipboard function allows you to copy the current table data to the clipboard.
It takes one optional argument, a Row Range Lookup option, that will determine which rows are included in the clipboard output.It can take any following strings as input:
- visible - Rows currently visible in the table viewport
- active - Rows currently in the table (rows that pass current filters etc)
- selected - Rows currently selected by the selection module (this includes not currently active rows)
- all - All rows in the table regardless of filters
table.copyToClipboard("selected"); //copy the currently selected rows to the clipboard
If you leave this argument undefined, Tabulator will use the value of the clipboardCopyRowRange property, which has a default value of active
Clipboard Contents
By default Tabulator includes column headers, row groups data trees and column calculations in the clipboard output.
You can choose to remove column headers groups, row groups or column calculations from the output data by setting the values in the clipboardCopyConfig option in the table definition:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardCopyConfig:{
columnHeaders:false, //do not include column headers in clipboard output
columnGroups:false, //do not include column groups in column headers for printed table
rowGroups:false, //do not include row groups in clipboard output
columnCalcs:false, //do not include column calculation rows in clipboard output
dataTree:false, //do not include data tree in printed table
formatCells:false, //show raw cell values without formatter
},
});
Column Groups Parsing - It is worth noting that if you include column group headers in your output data it will not be possible to paste that data back into Tabulator. The paste parse functions can only handle the actual column headers or no headers.
Show Unformatted Cell Values
Quite often graphical formatters like progress or star do not copy and paste well into spreadsheet applications. If you use these formatters you can set the formatCells property to false in the clipboardCopyConfig option to show only raw cell values in the clipboard output:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardCopyConfig:{
formatCells:false, //show raw cell values without formatter
},
});
Column Visibility
If you don't want to show a particular column in the clipboard output you can set the clipboard property in its column definition object to false:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
columns:[
{title:"Hidden Column", field:"secret", clipboard:false} //hide data in clipboard data
]
});
You can also force a hidden column to be visibile in the clipboard output by setting the clipboard property in its column definition object to true:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
columns:[
{title:"Hidden Column", field:"secret", visible:false, clipboard:true} //show hidden column in clipboard output
]
});
Row Range
The clipboardCopyRowRange option takes a Row Range Lookup value and allows you to choose which rows are included in the clipboard output:
- visible - Rows currently visible in the table viewport
- active - Rows currently in the table (rows that pass current filters etc)
- selected - Rows currently selected by the selection module (this includes not currently active rows)
- all - All rows in the table regardless of filters
These selectors can also be used when programmatically triggering a copy event. in this case if the selector is not specified it will default to the value set in the clipboardCopyRowRange property (which is active by default).
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardCopyRowRange:"selected", //change default selector to selected
});
Custom Row Range
For custom row ranges it is also possible to pass a function into the clipboardCopyRowRange option that should return an array of Row Components:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardCopyRowRange:function(){
//only copy rows to clipboard where the age is over 18
return this.getRows().filter((row) => {
return row.getData().age > 18;
});
},
});
Copy Formatter
You can alter the finished output to the clipboard using the clipboardCopyFormatter callback. The callback function receives two arguments, the first is a string representing the type of content to be formatted (either "plain" or "html" depending on the type of data entering the clipboard). The second argument is the string that is about to be inserted into the clipboard. The function and should return a string that will be inserted into the clipboard:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardCopyFormatter:function(type, output){
//type - a string representing the type of the content, either "plain" or "html"
//output - the output string about to be passed to the clipboard
if(type == "plain"){
output += "/n Copyright Bob Green 2020";
}
return output;
}
});
The clipboard system will by default output a plain text version of the table as well as an HTML version to allow the content to be pasted into a range of different systems. For this reason the clipboardCopyFormatter may be called several times during one copy action as it processes the different types of clipboard data
Copy Style
By default Tabulator will copy some of the tables styling along with the data to give a better visual appearance when pasted into other documents.
If you want to only copy the unstyled data then you should set the clipboardCopyStyled option to false in the table options object:
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboard:true,
clipboardCopyStyled:false,
});
Clipboard Accessors
You can use the accessorClipboard and accessorClipboardParams options on a column definition to alter the value of data in a column before it is added to the clipboard.
The example below will transform all ages into a boolean, showing if they are over 18 or not. The accessorClipboardParams is used to pass the age limit to the accessor so the same accessor function can be used on multiple columns with different age limits:
var ageAccessor = function(value, data, type, params, column){
return value >= params.legalAge;
}
{title:"Under Age", field:"age", accessorClipboard:ageAccessor, accessorClipboardParams:{legalAge:18} }
Full details of how accessors work can be found in the Accessors Documentation.
Clipboard Formatters
Cell Formatters
When copying to the clipboard you may want to apply a different formatter from the one usualy used to format the cell, you can do this using the formatterClipboard column definition option.
You can use the formatterClipboardParams to pass in any additional params to the formatter
These properties take the same inputs as the standard formatter property
//define clipboard formatter
function clipboardFormatter(cell, formatterParams, onRendered){
return cell.getValue() ? "YES" : "NO";
}
//column definition
{title:"Driver", field:"driver", formatter:"tickCross", formatterClipboard:printFormatter} //show "YES"/"NO" in the cell when copying to the clipboard
Passing a value of false into the formatter will cause the value to be shown as plain text without a formatter
Row Formatter
When copying to the clipboard you may want to apply a different formatter may want to apply a different formatter from the one usualy used to format the row. You can now do this using the rowFormatterClipboard table option, which takes the same inputs as the standard rowFormatter property.
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
rowFormatter:function(row){
//row - row component
var data = row.getData();
if(data.col == "blue"){
row.getElement().style.backgroundColor = "#1e3b20";
}
},
rowFormatterClipboard:function(row){
//row - row component
var data = row.getData();
if(data.col == "blue"){
row.getElement().style.backgroundColor = "#0000ff"; //use a different shade of blue background when copying to the clipboard
}
},
});
Passing a value of false into the formatter prevent the default row formatter from being run when the table is copied to the clipboard
Pasting Data
You can paste data into the table by making sure it has focus and pressing ctrl + v, there is no keybinding for this as the paste action is triggered by the paste event from the browse.
When data is pasted into the table, it is validated and converted into rows by the paste parser, then a paste action is triggered.
Paste Parser
Tabulator has one built in paste parser, that is designed to take a table formatted text string from the clipboard and turn it into row data. it breaks the tada into rows on a newline character \n and breaks the rows down to columns on a tab character \t.
It will then attempt to work out which columns in the data correspond to columns in the table. It tries three different ways to achieve this. First it checks the values of all columns in the first row of data to see if they match the titles of columns in the table. If any of the columns don't match it then tries the same approach but with the column fields. If either of those options match, Tabulator will map those columns to the incoming data and import it into rows. If there is no match then Tabulator will assume the columns in the data are in the same order as the visible columns in the table and import them that way.
The inbuilt parser will reject any clipboard data that does not contain at least one row and two columns, in that case the clipboardPasteError will be triggered.
If you extend the clipboard module to add your own parser, you can set it to be used as default with the clipboardPasteParser property.
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardPasteParser:"customParser", //use a custom built in parser
});
You can also pass a custom parser function into the clipboardPasteParser property, it should take one argument of the string of clipboard data and return an array of row data objects that will be passed to the paste action. If the clipboard data isn't valid it should return false.
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardPasteParser:function(clipboard){
//turn clipboard data into array
return clipboardArray; //return array
}
});
Paste Action
Once the data has been parsed into row data, it will be passed to a paste action to be added to the table. There are three inbuilt paste actions:
- insert - Inserts data into the table using the addRows function (default)
- update - Updates data in the table using the updateOrAddData function
- replace - replaces all data in the table using the setData function
You can set which action should be performed using the clipboardPasteAction property.
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardPasteAction:"replace", //use replace action on paste
});
You can also pass a custom action function into the clipboardPasteAction property, it should take one argument of the row data from the paste parse function and trigger an action on the table and where possible return the row objects that are created
var table = new Tabulator("#example-table", {
clipboardPasteAction:function(rowData){
return this.table.updateData(rows);
}
});
Clipboard Mutators
You can use the mutatorClipboard and mutatorClipboardParams options on a column definition to alter the value of data in a column as it is pasted into the table.
The example below will transform all ages into a boolean, showing if they are over 18 or not. The mutatorClipboardParams is used to pass the age limit to the accessor so the same accessor function can be used on multiple columns with different age limits:
var ageAccessor = function(value, data, type, params, column){
return value >= params.legalAge;
}
{title:"Under Age", field:"age", mutatorClipboard:ageAccessor, mutatorClipboardParams:{legalAge:18} }
Note: The mutateClipboard is called before the paste action is triggered, which may result in a different mutator being triggered after mutateClipboard.
Callbacks
A range of callbacks are available for the clipboard. See the Clipboard Callbacks section for more information.