hj

Ah, I think I see what you mean. You have to save a ‘preference’ for the sort order first…otherwise new entries just get added in as new rows at the top of the table. (is that right?..)

I will give it a go!

Thanks
HJ

Hi,

Many thanks for the detailed reply.

You say… : “In your specific use-case, you have tried to ‘force’ a certain image size to make them all equal even though you change the middle Column width.”

I don’t know what you mean by ‘forcing’ an image size? When I set the table up I just set a table 3 columns x 37 rows – I never set any column widths (how would you do that?), I assumed they were all equal size, and they looked equal in the admin. In fact the column widths HAVE stayed the same size, but the images in all middle columns have shrunk!

Is this because in the first row middle column the imported image was larger than the image imported in the first column? It appears the plugin has shrunk the image and not the column. But the odd thing is it has done that for ALL images placed in the middle column.

I made this table completely unaware that there was any mechanism to manually size columns or rows – is there such a mechanism?

I’m sure one solution is to manually resize all images (in Photoshop) to a standard size BEFORE placing in the table. But that’s rather long-winded!

Incidentally, the CSS fix you gave worked very nicely for the table when viewed in PORTRAIT on a mobile screen. But when the screen was rotated to LANDSCAPE view, unfortunately all the middle column images had once again shrunk in size!

It’s not a disaster by any means. And perhaps it’s about understanding more how WP DataTables handles images.

regards
HJ

Hi Essekia,

dkore.uk/4essekia

7 screenshots – start with Step 1 and work your way through.
Or try it for yourself by going to the root URL.

HJ

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. The conditional logic approach is certainly interesting, might be able to do something with that.

I had thought of something like that as a different approach to my original ‘dropdown-loads-form’ idea. The approach would be a dropdown which loads specific fields into a form depending on option selected – or alternatively hides certain fields from a full gammut of fields which covers all form scenarios. i.e. you might start with all the fields, but selecting MAPS in a dropdown might hide certain fields such as Author and ISBN No. Not sure if that would work or not, but it was a thought.

The only problem with such an approach , and even your conditional logic approach, is that you only have one form, albeit with variations. But upon SUBMIT, I imagine the content could only be sent to one data table…and there you have a problem with matching of fields. Unless that ‘send’ action could also be conditional..?

All interesting stuff!

In the short term I’ve landed on the idea of using tabs to hold a range of forms on a single page. Not quite as elegant a solution, but workable!

regards
HJ

Well, looking at the features list for the plugin, it appears that some of your needs might be met with the Pro version?…..

• Allow users to edit only their own data
• Show users only their own data on frontend
• Register users from WordPress frontend (action)
• User frontend post submission (action)

Have you tried the Pro version free 7 day trial?

You might also look at the plugin docs…

https://tablesomewp.com/docs/docs-for-tablesome-1-0/

At the bottom of section 1. you’ll see some advice on how to Filter Table Data based on User and Time.

Sorry I can’t give you a precise answer, I’m new to Tablesome myself!

HJ

Just a follow-up…. the CSS mods you suggested as a temporary fix work very nicely, thank you.

HJ

Hi,

I’m not Tablesome support…..but sounds a bit like what my use case. I’m collecting form entries which include an author name (and other details, title, publication date etc.). My form field names are exactly the same as my column headers in Tablesome.

All my submissions are shown by Tablesome, and of course the ‘author’ column can be sorted in ascending or descending order (alphabetically).

If I want to see what publications have been submitted for a particular author, I just use the search box and put the author name in – it then lists publications related to that author.

Maybe I’m missing something with your use case, though?

HJ

OK, thank you for clarification. Perhaps it might be best to try it under the free Pro trial, first. I think I’ll do that.

HJ

Hi,

Many thanks for that explanation! I may try the fix and see what effect it has (and grow my knowledge of CSS!)

I dipped back into the admin for this table and can confirm that when the table was made the cell widths were not adjusted and that they all looked the same size (visually at least).

Hope you have success in squashing the bug!

regards
HJ

Thank you for those ideas, your red ‘checked’ box is perfect. When I think about it, it’s not absolutely necessary to have any color for an unchecked box – if any item is ‘red checked’ it simply means it’s out on loan.

To be honest I don’t quite understand the use of checkboxes in a table display. On the plugin page under PRO, one of the PRO benefits is…”Add clickable Checkbox columns”. For whom would these checkbox columns be of use? For an admin? Or for a public viewer? In my library scenario, a checkbox might only be ticked or altered by an admin; a public viewer would have no interaction with a checkbox, it would simply indicate the loan status of an item (book or pamplet etc.)

I looked in the docs but couldn’t find anything to explain the usage of the checkbox column. So although it sounds good, I’m not sure I understand it!

Thanks for confirming that – I prefer for data to be stored in new tables like that; some other plugins throw the data into wp_posts or wp_terms, which I’m not so happy about because it mixes up regular posts with table data.

So that’s a plus for me, thanks.

One further question: the pro version suggests you can add an extra ‘checkbox’ column to a table. Could the checkbox be styled so that when checked it is red, when unchecked it is green? I’m thinking of a booked-in/booked-out system for a small library. If an admin user could check a box when an item is out on loan, that would be very handy.

Thanks.

Well…thank you for that very thorough explanation!…. above and beyond the call of duty for the Lite version I’m using! Also, I’m ashamed to say, somewhat above my paygrade ?? However, I will try and work on those CSS suggestions when time allows (this isn’t a full time project for me!)

I appreciate your diligence and support, makes WPDataTables highly recommendable.

Kind regards
HJ

Hi again,

Many thanks for that! But a couple of follow-up questions:

1. Is that a global fix?…because it doesn’t seem to reference a particular table. Here we are just talking about fixing the Farm Bookings table, not any table other table we have or might create in the future. ?

2. The color fix appears to have changed everything beyond the first row – that still has a heading which is in RED (#FD453B). The other month headings had also been styled in red, but now the fix has been applied all those following month headings are in BLACK. …and yet when you look at the WP table admin, the month headings are in RED.

So it seems the fix isn’t being very selective, and is overriding the color definitions made in the table build? Except for the very first row.

Yours confused….!

Thank you for that very comprehensive reply! It will require a rather comprehensive look at files at my end…which may take a little while ??

The theme is Enfold, a premium theme which includes it’s own page-builder ‘Avia’. I can’t really invoke another theme because the table is placed within an Avia builder componenet. You may well be right that there is a conflict between Avia styles and WPTable styles, with Avia overriding. But I’ll have to look into it when I’ve more time.

Appreciate the thorough investigation, I’ll reply as soon as I can.

regards
HJ

Thanks for that useful script, tbauer – a very simple way to disable what should be configurable in the plugin admin.