Tabularasa - A Table UI built using a schema.

Tabularasa is a Vue plugin which acts as a wrapper around a variety of [PrimeVue]{https://www.primefaces.org/primevue/} widgets to provide a Search-List-Detail interface.

tabularasa takes in a configuration 'schema' (which defines the look and feel of the UI, and how data is presented), and collections data, which contains data items to be displayed.

tabularasa treats collection data as read-only. No changes are made to the passed-in object - instead, when data is edited, events are generated, containing the old and new data.

Demo

A demo of tabularasa, using data generated by Faker.js. The source for this app is in testapp/

Tabularasa - Test app

Installation

First create a new Vue app:

vue create

Edit src/main.js adding the following before new Vue is called:

import * as tabularasa from 'tabularasa'
Vue.use(tabularasa)

Demo

There is a testapp which demonstrates the use of tabularasa. This can be run by cloning this repository and then running:

# Install the package dependencies
yarn

# Run the demo
yarn serve

Usage

Configuration

Data

tabularasa follows the convention of DataTable to expect data as an array of objects. These are referred to here as collections of items.

Schema

tabularasa uses a configuration schema to configure the UI, and the presentation of the data. Where possible order in the schema will be preserved in the UI.

It takes the following structure:

{
  Collection_Name: {
    TRList: {
      fields: [
        label: 'Column header label',
        // Property in the data object. Can use dot-notation - e.g. 'author.surname' for nested objects.
        field: 'fieldName',
        component: 'CustomDisplay', // A custom widget used to display this field.
        properties: {
          // Properties to be passed direct to the 'Column' widget
        },
      ],
      filters: {
        // Fields to enable filtering on
        // Properties are optional but can be used to set initial filter state
        field: { value: null, matchMode: 'contains' },
      },
      properties: {
        // Properties to be passed direct to DataTable (for styling etc)
      },
    },
    TRDetail: {
      fields: [
        {
          label: 'Field label',
          // Property in the data object. Can use dot-notation - e.g. 'author.surname' for nested objects.
          field: 'fieldName',
          component: 'CustomInput', // A custom widget to be used to edit this field.
          properties: {
            // Properties to be passed direct to the Input (i.e. PrimeVue component config)
          }
        },
      ],
      events: {
        // Events to be passed direct to TRDetail's child components/inputs (for custom events)
      }
      methods: {
        // Methods to be passed direct to TRDetail's child components/inputs (for callbacks etc)
      }
      props: {
        // Properties to be passed direct to TRDetail's child components/inputs (for styling etc)
      }
    }
  }
}

Field values

The value of each field in TRDetail.fields can be specified in one of 4 ways:

• name - the name of a property in the object to be displayed.
• name.childname - the name of a nested 'child' property inside the 'parent' property. For example, author.last_name to get the last name of a related author (To-One relationship).
• name[].childname - the name of a 'child' property inside each object in an array of objects. For example blogs[].title to get the title of all related blogs (To-Many relationship).
• name{}.childname - the name of a 'child' property inside each object in a nested object. For example blogs{}.title to get the title of all related blogs (To-Many relationship).

Display and Input Components generally display either a single item, or a list of items. The former will fail with an error for fields containing [] or {}, the latter if the field does not contain these brackets.

Special properties

There are 3 special properties in the schema - events, methods and properties. Their values are objects which are passed in to the child components and 'bound' to the element/made available in the component.

events - These are attached to the underlying element via v-on. See v-on object syntax in the Vue3 Directives methods - These are made available to be called in the component JS. properties - These are attached to the underlying element via v-bind. See v-bind object syntax in the Vue3 Directives

See the AutocompleteInput for an example of using these parameters.

Components

There are 3 components in tabularasa, though in most cases you only need to use the first 2:

1. TRRoot - A TabView where each tab is a TRList.
2. TRList - A DataTable.
3. TRDetail - A 'pop-up' Dialog window, providing a view to a single row selected from the DataTable

Common Properties

All components take the following common properties:

• configuration - A Configuration schema object.

TRRoot

The TRRoot component also takes the following properties:

• collections - An object containing collections, keyed by collection name.

TRList

The TRList component also takes the following properties:

• name - The name of the generated table. This is used to identify the table, for example TRRoot will provide the tab title.
• collection - An array of 'data' items.

TRDetail

The TRDetail component is not usually called directly, being used inside a Dialog launched when a row is clicked on.

It takes the following properties:

• name - The name of the item being displayed (used in Dialog title).
• item - The object containing all the item's data.

Widgets

Fields displayed in the TRDetail can use a variety of widgets provided to display fields in different ways. The widget can be selected by setting InputType in the configuration schema.

The following widgets are available - mostly wrappers around PrimeVue components of the same/similar name:

• BooleanDisplay - Display true/false as a checkbox
• ChipsDisplay - Display multiple items as 'chips'
• AutocompleteInput - Display single or multiple items as text or 'chips'
• BooleanInput - Input true/false as a checkbox
• DateInput - Input with a calendar date picker
• NumberInput - Input number/currency strings
• TextInput - Input text strings
• TextareaInput - Input text boxes (for long strings)

AutocompleteInput

This input is special in that it needs callbacks to provide the suggestions for autocompletion. The schema for an autocomplete field looks like:

{
  label: 'Blogs',
  field: 'blogs[].title',
  input: 'AutocompleteInput',
  events: {
    // Add a custom event for the input being blurred
    blur: {
      console.log('Input was blurred')
    }
  },
  properties: {
    // Property to extract from objects returned by onComplete function
    field: 'title',
    // If true, dialog uses 'Chips' multi-input format
    multiple: true,
  },
  methods: {
    // AutoCompleteInput expects there to be an onComplete method
    onComplete: (query) => {
      // Method must return an array of autocomplete suggestions.
      // If the 'field' property is set, objects must have that field to display
      // Otherwise a simple array of strings can be returned
      return [
        {
          title: 'One',
          value: 1,
        },
        {
          title: 'Two',
          value: 2,
        },
      ]
    },
  },
}

Events

tabularasa generates events at various points in the UI. These are all sent to TR's own Event Bus, built using [mitt]{https://github.com/developit/mitt}

To provide global access to the bus in your Vue app, do the following:

app.provide('trBus, tabularasa.trBus)

You can then access the bus in your own components by injecting it:

import { inject } from 'vue'
inject('trBus')

Events are sent using the emit method, and listened to using the on method:

// tabularasa component
trBus.emit('message', 'Hello World')

// Your component
trBus.on('message', (msg) => console.log(msg))

If you don't want to have access to the bus 'globally' you can instead do the following in a specific component:

import { trBus } from 'tabularasa'

Event Scoping

Since components may be reused, events can be scoped by setting the name property on a component, for example:

<TRList :name="people" />
<TRList :name="blogs" />

This is the default behaviour for TRRoot, which sets name on child TRList components to be the collection key from the passed-in data.

This name will then be prepended to the event label, separated by a :.

You can either listen for events within a specific component, e.g:

trBus.on('TRRoot:activeTab', (name) => console.log(name))

Or you can use the wildcard * to listen for all events, and then filter on event label, e.g:

trBus.on('*', (label, msg) => {
  if label.includes(':save:') {
    console.log('Saved'))
  }
}

TRRoot Events

• activeTab - Active Tab event. Event passes the collection_name from the schema of the active/focused tab.

TRList Events

• page - Pagination event. Event passes an object containing offset and limit values. Useful for dynamic data fetching/updating from an API.
• load - Page load event. TRList component has initialized.
• reload - Page reload event. User has pressed the reload button, or part of the UI is requesting a refresh.
• rowSelect - A row has ben selected. Event passes selected row's data object.

Note - :name will be appended, if set.

TRDetail Events

• update - Fires every time a field is updated (e.g. every keypress). Event is an array containing the original data object, and a new object containing the modified field.
• blur - Field was updated, then lost focus (e.g. user clicked elsewhere). Event is an array containing original data object, and a new object containing the modified field.
• save - Save button clicked. Event is an array containing the original data object, and a new object containing all modified properties.

Note - :name of the 'parent' TRList will be appended, if set.

These events allow for 3 different modes of operation when users edit your data. For example:

• Update a single field in your API on every keypress => update
• Update a single field in your API when the user switches to the next field => blur
• Update all changed fields in your API when the 'card' is saved => save