Looking for a Grid

Hi Folks - I am looking for some help when it comes to deciding upon a jQuery Grid. Being new to jQuery, I am still trying to wrap my head around everything. I am looking for a grid that will allow me to control the layout/format/css of individual cells within a table. All of my work would be a mix of jQuery & Coldfusion. What I would need to do is read a DB table, spit out the table, add logic during the creation of a table, and add in certain CSS coloring and classes or divs to add in tool tips, and still have all the sweetness of a slick jQuery UI. Any and all ideas are appreciated. Thanks, Doug

Short and sweet: jqGrid Very powerful grid. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Hi Ray - As always thank you for your ideas and assistance. I am examining the demo/code for jqGrid. From my examination of the code, it looks like when you reference the page that has your query on it, you are pulling in the data, and the grid just displays it as is. What if, I want to test for values within my query and modify the cells background-color during the creation of it. For example, I have a query that is a joined from 2 tables. The first table has: Name, phone, address The 2nd table has address_changed I would join the two tables, and during the creation of the table, I would test for a value from address_changed. If there was a change, the original address field would be highlighted in some color, and and the field would then be associated with a tool tip to display the new value, and the address_changed column would not be displayed. From what I am reading, it looks like jqGrid just grabs the data and dumps  it out. Any and all ideas would be helpful. Thanks. Doug ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I believe you want to look into custom formatters: http://www.trirand.com/jqgridwiki/doku.php?id=wiki:custom_formatter ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Being a novice at jQuery functionality and features, but if I was to have a table with 200+ rows with changes in them, wouldn't that add additional overhead to the web page to create custom JS functions that would reference only the cells that would require a change be done to it? Maybe I'm not wrapping my head around this correctly. But with JS and jQuery being client-side languages, when it makes a call to the server-side page, from the examples, it looks like it's only retrieving the data that the query would produce. But if I was to attempt to modify certain cells within the table, wouldn't I have to add JS code to modify every independent cell that needs a change? Thanks. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

> Being a novice at jQuery functionality and features, but if I was to > have a table with 200+ rows with changes in them, wouldn't that add > additional overhead to the web page to create custom JS functions that > would reference only the cells that would require a change be done to > it? Yes. :) I'm a novice to the Ajax world myself, but this is something that has no cut and dry answer. Processing on the client versus processing on the server will always have it's strengths and weaknesses. There is no one right answer for this. > But with JS and jQuery being client-side languages, when it makes a > call to the server-side page, from the examples, it looks like it's > only retrieving the data that the query would produce. > > But if I was to attempt to modify certain cells within the table, > wouldn't I have to add JS code to modify every independent cell that > needs a change? Now this part I'm not so sure about. Are you building an editable grid? Remember - a custom formatter is applied to just a column. It rewrites your data. It doesn't necessarily modify the entire table. Also, if you are doing paging with jqGrid, then you are just modifying one column of one page.

>>wouldn't that add additional overhead? > Yes. :) That's what I was afraid of.  I am trying to keep my code relatively tight and use more ColdFusion logic than JS/jQuery. > Now this part I'm not so sure about. Are you building an editable > grid? Remember - a custom formatter is applied to just a column. It > rewrites your data. It doesn't necessarily modify the entire table. > Also, if you are doing paging with jqGrid, then you are just modifying > one column of one page. At this time, I am not making an editable table.  I am looking to just have controls that allow me to manipulate columns, maybe move them around, sort on the fly, have nice pagination controls.  I don't need a lot og AJAX to edit cells, I just need the ability to edit the design of the table behind the scenes, and then display with the nice jQuery table wrapper. If you take a look at Ingrid for jQuery, you'll see what I am getting at. I am testing out Ingrid, but I am having some problems with the layout and the CSS associated with it. So I am looking for alternatives. Thanks!! ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

>>>wouldn't that add additional overhead? >> Yes. :) > > That's what I was afraid of.  I am trying to keep my code relatively > tight and use more ColdFusion logic than JS/jQuery. I'd at least give it a try. Remember, everything above binary is overhead. ;

Doug, Check this article out (not my blog but it got me through configuring JQGrid) http://www.coldfusion-ria.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/1/27/Using-jQuery-based-jq Grid-with-ColdFusion-Part-1 This winds up, in the third installment, with a full blown CRUD enabled grid. He's using json to pass values back and forth to cfc's in the background. >>wouldn't that add additional overhead? > Yes. :) That's what I was afraid of.  I am trying to keep my code relatively tight and use more ColdFusion logic than JS/jQuery. > Now this part I'm not so sure about. Are you building an editable > grid? Remember - a custom formatter is applied to just a column. It > rewrites your data. It doesn't necessarily modify the entire table. > Also, if you are doing paging with jqGrid, then you are just modifying > one column of one page. At this time, I am not making an editable table.  I am looking to just have controls that allow me to manipulate columns, maybe move them around, sort on the fly, have nice pagination controls.  I don't need a lot og AJAX to edit cells, I just need the ability to edit the design of the table behind the scenes, and then display with the nice jQuery table wrapper. If you take a look at Ingrid for jQuery, you'll see what I am getting at. I am testing out Ingrid, but I am having some problems with the layout and the CSS associated with it. So I am looking for alternatives. Thanks!! ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----