Since then, the plugin has steadily received attention and has become very popular:

• over 85000 downloads
• about 90 ratings
• with an average rating of 96.4%
• 14 available translations
• over 1300 comments on this website
• almost 200 threads in the WordPress Support Forums
• countless emails with questions, suggestions, ideas, bugs, feedback, and praise

At this point, the first birthday of WP-Table Reloaded, I’d like to say THANK YOU to everybody in the community who made this possible. This includes (I hope I don’t forget anyone :-) ) the users, the supporters, the code contributors, the beta-testers, the bug reporters, the translators, and especially the people who donated or sent me a gift. Thank you all very much!

Let’s hope that these numbers while have increased for the second birthday. I still have ideas for future versions, so stay tuned! :-)

One consequence of this popularity is the steadily growing amount of support requests. I’ll generally try to answer each single one of them quickly and with a precise and good answer, and I believe that I was pretty successful with that so far. However, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with the high number of questions that people have, and which I accepted in different ways: through email, comments, and the support forums. Unfortunately, my available free time does no longer permit this dedication, as I’m busy with other things outside of WordPress, too, like my studies and my great job.

Therefore, I will incorporate a change to my support handling policy: I would like to get more people involved in answering support questions, in areas where this is possible. For that, from now on, the WordPress Support Forums will be the primary place to ask support questions and receive answers. I will close the support comments section on this site, but will leave the existing ones for reference. Additionally, I will no longer answer support questions that come in by email, except if I asked for them, or if they contain bug reports or sensitive information that shall not be publicly available.
I’m doing this to gather all support questions in one place, where others (and I) have a better overview about them. This will hopefully lead to other people helping out with answering questions. So, if you know the answer to, e.g., a styling question, please feel free to answer such questions. I will still monitor the Support Forums and try to provide answers as my time permits, of course.
Hopefully, this will keep up the current level of support, which I could not uphold otherwise.
Maybe I can also use the approach that other plugin authors have incorporated: Donations can be made encourage support for specific questions.

Thanks a lot for your understanding!

And now let’s celebrate the first birthday of WP-Table Reloaded! :-)

My thanks for making this possible go out to the folks at ningboHOTELreview.com. Thanks!

To get started with WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, you should read the introduction and follow the included instructions. You will also find links to the other presented Extensions there.

Now lets come to the actual code of the Extension:

/**
 * Change default textfield width on the "Edit" screen
 */
if ( is_admin() ) {
    function wp_table_reloaded_textarea_width_css() {
        ?>
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
            /* Change all columns */
            #table_contents textarea {
                min-width: 400px;
            }
 
            /* Change only textareas in column A */
            #table_contents .edit_col_1 textarea {
                min-width: 780px;
            }
        </style>
 
        <?php
    }
    add_action( "admin_print_styles-{$WP_Table_Reloaded_Admin->hook}", 'wp_table_reloaded_textarea_width_css' );
}

Important: The code from above is not yet ready to use! (Well, it would work, but is not really useful.) Before it will be useful to you, you need to adjust the included CSS code, so that it changes the width to what you want. You can see two sections of CSS code, marked by a comment line above them. The first one is responsible for setting the textfield width on all columns of the “Edit” screen. The second example only changes those of the first column. You can copy that section as often as needed (don’t forget to change the “.col_1″ to whatever you need). For both sections you can then set the width to any pixel value you like, by simply changing the number after the “min-width:” attribute.

Then, the code just needs to be copied into the file “wp-table-reloaded-extensions.php”, created according to these instructions (after the Plugin Header comment, but before the closing PHP bracket ?>). Then, just activate the new plugin “WP-Table Reloaded Extensions”, if you haven’t. That’s it! :-)

If you like this series of Extensions, I’m happy about any feedback, and especially about further suggestions!

Previous posts in this series that might interest you:

• Announcement and Foundation on Extensions
• Extension 1: Automatic URL to Links conversion
• Extension 2: Custom Name in the Admin Menu
• Extension 3: Changing the Table Shortcode
• Extension 4: Changing DataTables strings
• Extension 5: How to use PHP in table cells
• Extension 6: Showing only rows that match a filter

English plugin page

deutsche Plugin-Seite

After six weeks without an update, a new version of WP-Table Reloaded can be downloaded: The automatic update for WP-Table Reloaded 1.7 should be available in your WordPress admin area shortly.

As already mentioned in the beta test announcement post, the changes are:

• feature: add “Table” button to the visual editor (TinyMCE)
• feature: update DataTables JavaScript library to version 1.6.2, including TableTools
• enhancement: add option for initial number of rows per pagination page
• enhancement: “DataTables JavaScript Features” section is visible by default
• enhancement: add value “all” to the four Shortcode parameters show_rows, hide_rows, show_columns, hide_columns
• enhancement: add WP-Table Reloaded screen icon to all plugin screens and the Top-Level menu entry
• enhancement: add two template tag functions that return the output instead of echoing it
• bugfix: fix problem with admin menu parent pages, make them ready for WP 3.0
• bugfix: import/replace replaces only data; name, description, options, and visibility settings are kept
• languages: added French, Chinese (Simplified), Russian, and Ukrainian
• a few minor changes, fixes, code clean-ups, and optimizations

During the last weeks, I also published several WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, small code snippets that can be used to add further functions to the plugin, and that have received a great reception by all users.

You can download WP-Table Reloaded 1.7 from the plugin’s page or from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you like the plugin, I’d be very happy if you would rate it in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You might also consider a donation or have a look at my Amazon wishlist. This will encourage me to further develop the plugin and keep giving countless hours of support. Thank you!

If you experience any trouble, find bugs or have feature requests, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the means mentioned in the support section. Please make sure to carefully read the plugin’s page as well as the Documentation. A lot of questions are already answered in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

I hope you enjoy the new version! :-)

The list of changes for 1.7 includes:

• feature: add “Table” button to the visual editor (TinyMCE)
• feature: update DataTables JavaScript library to version 1.6.2, including TableTools
• enhancement: add option for initial number of rows per pagination page
• enhancement: add value “all” to the four Shortcode parameters show_rows, hide_rows, show_columns, hide_columns
• enhancement: add WP-Table Reloaded screen icon to all plugin screens and the Top-Level menu entry
• enhancement: add two template tag functions that return the output instead of echoing it
• bugfix: fix problem with admin menu parent pages, make them ready for WP 3.0
• a few minor changes, fixes, code clean-ups, and optimisations

If you are willing to help and want to take part in the beta test, please download the developer version “1.7-beta1″. I plan to release the plugin in about a week (around the 12th of March).

To install the beta version, deactivate your current version, replace the folder “wp-table-reloaded” in your “plugins” folder with the one from the downloaded zip-file and activate the plugin again. Deactivation and Activation are VERY IMPORTANT!

BUT: Please note that this is a beta release. Although I’ve tested it on my site, I do NOT recommend using it on your production site, just yet. As always: Please make sure to have a backup of your files and your database before installing it. Thanks!

If you encounter any bugs, errors or problems, please leave them here as a comment. Feature requests are also welcome, of course.

I would also like all translators to update their translations. There’s .pot-file included in case you need it. After you are done, please email me the *.po and the *.mo file of your language. In any case: Please let me know, if you will be translating the new version or if you can not do it (for whatever reasons). Big thanks to all translators!

Thanks already to all beta-testers and translators! As always: Please don’t hesitate to comment or email me with any questions!

That’s the use case for which the following filtering extension can be used. It adds another parameter filter to the Shortcode that gets passed one or more search terms (connected with a logical operator):

[table id=1 filter="word1&&word2" /]

Then, only those rows of the table are shown, that have columns that exactly match the search term(s). In the example, only rows where one column has the exact value “word1″ and one column has the exact value “word2″, will be shown.

Let me start with some thanks first: This extension has been made possible by the kind donations or support of Peter Miller, Paulo Correia, PJ Scheufele, Wei-Ni Chong, and Sjoerd Jongerius. Thanks to all of them!

To get started with WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, you should read the introduction and follow the included instructions. You will also find links to the other presented Extensions there.

Now lets come to the actual code of the Extension:

/**
 * Show only rows that match the "filter" parameter value/contained logical expression
 */
function wp_table_reloaded_filter_rows( $output_options, $table_id, $table ) {
    // early exit if no "filter" parameter given
    if ( empty( $output_options['filter'] ) )
        return $output_options;
 
    $filter = $output_options['filter']; // from the Shortcode parameter "filter"
 
    // && is the passed value for &&
    if ( false !== strpos( $filter, '&&' ) ) {
        $compare = 'and';
        $filter = explode( '&&', $filter );
    } elseif ( false !== strpos( $filter, '||' ) ) {
        $compare = 'or';
        $filter = explode( '||', $filter );
    } else {
        $compare = 'none'; // single filter word
        $filter = array( $filter );
    }
 
    foreach ( $filter as $key => $string ) {
        // remove HTML entities and turn them into characters, escape/slash other characters
        $filter[ $key ] = addslashes( wp_specialchars_decode( $string, ENT_QUOTES, false, true ) );
    }
 
    $row_match = false;
    foreach ( $table['data'] as $row_idx => $row ) {
        if ( 0 == $row_idx && $output_options['first_row_th'] )
            continue;
 
        $found = array();
        foreach ( $filter as $key => $string ) {
            $found[ $key ] = in_array( $string, $row );
        }
 
        switch ( $compare ) {
            case 'none':
            case 'or':
                if ( in_array( true, $found ) ) // at least one word was found / only filter word was found
                    $row_match = true;
                else
                    $output_options['hide_rows'][] = (string)$row_idx;
                break;
            case 'and':
                if ( ! in_array( false, $found ) ) // if not (at least one word was *not* found) == all words were found
                    $row_match = true;
                else
                    $output_options['hide_rows'][] = (string)$row_idx;
                break;
        }
    }
 
    // if search term(s) was/were not found in any of the rows, all rows need to be hidden
    // but only if first row is used as table head
    if ( ! $row_match && $output_options['first_row_th'] ) {
        $row_idx = 0;
        $output_options['hide_rows'][] = (string)$row_idx;
    }
 
    return $output_options;
}
 
/**
 * Add "filter" as a valid parameter to the [table] Shortcode
 */
function wp_table_reloaded_shortcode_parameter_filter( $default_atts ) {
    $default_atts['filter'] = '';
    return $default_atts;
}
 
/**
 * Register necessary Plugin Filters
 */
add_filter( 'wp_table_reloaded_frontend_output_options', 'wp_table_reloaded_filter_rows', 10, 3 );
add_filter( 'wp_table_reloaded_shortcode_table_default_atts', 'wp_table_reloaded_shortcode_parameter_filter' );

The code form above just needs to be copied into the file “wp-table-reloaded-extensions.php”, created according to these instructions (after the Plugin Header comment, but before the closing PHP bracket ?>). Then, just activate the new plugin “WP-Table Reloaded Extensions”, if you haven’t. That’s it! :-)

I commented the code so that it should be easy to understand, but here’s short walkthrough: The Extension hooks into the WP-Table Reloaded code to register a new Shortcode parameter filter. That is necessary so that the actual value passed with that argument is available to the actual filter algorithm. That algorithm starts with determining, what kind of filtering is wanted (“and”, “or”, or just one word). It then extracts the search term(s) and searches the row for them. Then the actual condition is checked, and if it is not fulfilled, the row will be marked as hidden from the output. There are some minor sanity checks around that (i.e. the first row needs to be treated differently or there needs to be a fallback, if all rows would be hidden), but basically that’s how the code works.

Here are a few examples that show the three possibilities for using it (remember that in all cases, exact matches to the cell content are required, i.e. if you search for “test”, but the cell content is “testing”, that will not match!):

Search for a single word in a row:

[table id=1 filter="word1" /]

(All rows that do not have “word1″ as the content of at least one cell will be hidden.)

Search for at least one word:

[table id=1 filter="word1||word2" /]

(All rows that do not have either “word1″ or “word2″ as the content of cells will be hidden.)
You can combine as many search terms with || as needed.

Search for all words:

[table id=1 filter="word1&&word2&&word3" /]

(All rows that do not have “word1″ and “word2″ and “word3″ as the content of cells will be hidden.)
You can combine as many search terms with && as needed.

Important: Mixing the logical operators is not possible though, i.e.

[table id=1 filter="word1||word2&&word3" /]

will not work!

So, you are now able to only show the necessary parts of a large table :-)

If you like this series of Extensions, I’m happy about any feedback, and especially about further suggestions!

Previous posts in this series that might interest you:

• Announcement and Foundation on Extensions
• Extension 1: Automatic URL to Links conversion
• Extension 2: Custom Name in the Admin Menu
• Extension 3: Changing the Table Shortcode
• Extension 4: Changing DataTables strings
• Extension 5: How to use PHP in table cells

To get started with WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, you should read the introduction and follow the included instructions. You will also find links to the other presented Extensions there.

Security Warning

Before I start, let me explain, why you should only use this Extension, if you are really sure that you need it and if you really know what you are doing: PHP code is very mighty. Due to the structure of PHP and the HTTP request handling, code that is run from within the table lives in the same “area” as the WordPress (or plugin) PHP code and thus has the same rights and possibilities. However, it is not solely controlled by the admin as the plugin or WP core files usually are.
This is especially critical if you have multiple users registered in your WordPress site: Anyone who can edit tables of WP-Table Reloaded will be able to insert (and with that cause execution of) PHP code. And with that, he can do a lot of bad things, if he wanted! What this means: If you want to use this Extension, make sure that only people who you trust can edit tables in WP-Table Reloaded (using the corresponding setting in the “Plugin Options”). Preferably this should be only admins of your site. Again: Treat this step seriously! Neither WP-Table Reloaded nor the Extension do any checks on whether a user has the right to insert PHP code! Again: If a user can edit tables, he will be able to enter any PHP code he wants! (Obviously, all of this is no problem, if you are the only registered person in your WordPress site.)

I will not take any responsibility if this feature is misused!

If you can, you should avoid using this Extension, i.e. by developing your own Shortcode (remember: Those also work in tables!) as you’ll have control of the underlaying PHP code and not the user who edits a table.

For the PHP developers: The Extension uses PHP’s eval() function. That function takes a string (in our case the cell content) and executes it as PHP. Due to the internal structure of WordPress Shortcodes, we need some output buffering around that function, so that any outputs will not be sent to the browser directly, but together with the output of the [table id=N /] Shortcode. (Take this into consideration before using the Extension, as output buffering on a large number of cells might slighty increase the time needed to render a table and the load on your server.)
Additionally, on certain hosts, the eval() function might be disabled due to security reasons.

Now lets come to the actual code of the Extension:

/**
 * Executes PHP code in table cells
 * @author Tobias Baethge
 * @see http://tobias.baethge.com/2010/02/extension-5-how-to-use-php-in-table-cells/
 */
function wp_table_reloaded_execute_php_in_cells( $cell_content ) {
    ob_start();
    eval( '?>' . $cell_content );
    $output = ob_get_clean();
    return $output;
}
add_filter( 'wp_table_reloaded_cell_content', 'wp_table_reloaded_execute_php_in_cells' );

The code form above just needs to be copied into the file “wp-table-reloaded-extensions.php”, created according to these instructions (after the Plugin Header comment, but before the closing PHP bracket ?>). Then, just activate the new plugin “WP-Table Reloaded Extensions”, if you haven’t. That’s it! :-)

To use PHP in a table, you can now enter commands into your table cells. They have to be valid PHP syntax, including the opening and closing brackets (<?php and ?>). In those commands, you can use the regular echo function to output text. Any text that is not within the brackets will be printed as-is.

If you like this series of Extensions, I’m happy about any feedback, and especially about further suggestions!

Previous posts in this series that might interest you:

• Announcement and Foundation on Extensions
• Extension 1: Automatic URL to Links conversion
• Extension 2: Custom Name in the Admin Menu
• Extension 3: Changing the Table Shortcode
• Extension 4: Changing DataTables strings

To get started with WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, you should read the introduction and follow the included instructions. You will also find links to the other presented Extensions there.

Several people have approached me, asking how to change the “Search:” to “Filter:”, “Live Search:”, or other similar texts.
Those strings are all stored in a file that at the same time serves as the localization method for those strings, i.e. English and the other languages’ texts are simply stored in different files and only the needed one is loaded, depending on the locale that is used for WordPress. The files are all located in the “datatables” subfolder of the “languages” folder in the WP-Table Reloaded plugin folder.

Thus, changing strings is very similar to translating them to a new language: Find the file for your language in the mentioned folder and copy it to your theme’s folder (or another publicly available location on your server). This step will ensure that your changes will still be there after an update of the plugin. If you just change strings in the mentioned file, those changes will be gone after an update!

The file looks similar to this (this is the English file):

{
	"sProcessing":   "Processing...",
	"sLengthMenu":   "Show _MENU_ entries",
	"sZeroRecords":  "No matching records found",
	"sInfo":         "Showing _START_ to _END_ of _TOTAL_ entries",
	"sInfoEmpty":    "Showing 0 to 0 of 0 entries",
	"sInfoFiltered": "(filtered from _MAX_ total entries)",
	"sInfoPostFix":  "",
	"sSearch":       "Search:",
	"sUrl":          "",
	"oPaginate": {
		"sFirst":    "First",
		"sPrevious": "Previous",
		"sNext":     "Next",
		"sLast":     "Last"
	}
}

You can change any string that is on the right side of a colon (:). Make sure to not remove any of the quotation marks. Also, you can not use quotation marks in your changed strings! The words that are surrounded by an underscore (_) are placeholders for the numbers or input fields that are automatically added by the DataTables script. You must not alter those (you can however put them in a new place within the string).

This is an example of a file with changed string:

{
	"sProcessing":   "Please wait...",
	"sLengthMenu":   "Show _MENU_ rows",
	"sZeroRecords":  "No matching rows found in the table",
	"sInfo":         "Showing _START_ to _END_ of _TOTAL_ rows",
	"sInfoEmpty":    "Showing 0 to 0 of 0 rows",
	"sInfoFiltered": "(found from _MAX_ total entries)",
	"sInfoPostFix":  "",
	"sSearch":       "Live Filter:",
	"sUrl":          "",
	"oPaginate": {
		"sFirst":    "First",
		"sPrevious": "Previous",
		"sNext":     "Next",
		"sLast":     "Last"
	}
}

After making your changes, again make sure to have the file stored in your theme’s folder. You might want to use a more recognizable filename, like “datatables.txt” which I will use here.

It will then have a URL like http://www.example.com/wp-content/your-theme/datatables.txt. (You will need this URL, adjusted to your site, in the next step.)

After creating the file with the changed strings, we need to tell WP-Table Reloaded (i.e. the DataTables library) to use the file for obtaining the strings:

/**
 * Changes the file used for the DataTables strings to a different file (i.e. with changed strings)
 * @author Tobias Baethge
 * @see http://tobias.baethge.com/2010/02/extension-4-changing-datatables-strings/
 */
function wp_table_reloaded_change_datatables_language_file_url( $language_file_url ) {
    return 'http://www.example.com/wp-content/your-theme/datatables.txt'; // change this to the corresponding URL on your server
}
add_filter( 'wp_table_reloaded_url_datatables_language_file', 'wp_table_reloaded_change_datatables_language_file_url' );

Just replace the URL in this function with the URL to your file and the strings of the DataTables library will be taken from the file.

The code form above just needs to be copied into the file “wp-table-reloaded-extensions.php”, created according to these instructions (after the Plugin Header comment, but before the closing PHP bracket ?>). Then, just activate the new plugin “WP-Table Reloaded Extensions”, if you haven’t. That’s it! :-)

If you like this series of Extensions, I’m happy about any feedback, and especially about further suggestions!

Previous posts in this series that might interest you:

• Announcement and Foundation on Extensions
• Extension 1: Automatic URL to Links conversion
• Extension 2: Custom Name in the Admin Menu
• Extension 3: Changing the Table Shortcode

English plugin page

deutsche Plugin-Seite

Thanks to some great feedback of several plugin users, I was able to fix some bugs and add a few enhancements to WP-Table Reloaded 1.6.1, which is now available.

Changes include:

• enhancement: let WP Search also search table name and description
• enhancement: replacing a table during an import will leave options untouched and only replace table data
• bugfix: better fix for DataTables invisibility issue in IE 7
• enhancement: add 3 new plugin filters for frontend
• bugfix: fix for problem with search, if data is empty somehow

Your WordPress will offer an automatic update to the latest version soon. Otherwise, you can download WP-Table Reloaded 1.6.1 from the plugin’s page or from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you like the plugin, I’d be very happy if you would rate it in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You might also consider a donation or have a look at my Amazon wishlist. This will encourage me to further develop the plugin and keep giving countless hours of support. Thank you!

If you experience any trouble, find bugs or have feature requests, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the means mentioned in the support section. Please make sure to carefully read the plugin’s page as well as the Documentation. A lot of questions are already answered in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

To get started with WP-Table Reloaded Extensions, you should read the introduction and follow the included instructions. You will also find links to the other presented Extensions there.

Changing the name of the used Shortcode could be useful for several use cases:

• You want it to be in your native language (i.e. for German: Tabelle instead of table).
• You are already (or want to) use the table for something else.
• Your generated tables resemble something specific, i.e. a set of data, or a ranking.
• …

And it really is simple! All you need is this code:

/**
 * Changes Shortcode for WP-Table Reloaded from [table id=N /] to [[ranking id=N /]]
 * @author Tobias Baethge
 * @see http://tobias.baethge.com/2010/01/extension-3-changing-the-table-shortcode/
 */
function wp_table_reloaded_change_table_shortcode( $shortcode ) {
    return 'ranking';
}
add_filter( 'wp_table_reloaded_shortcode_table', 'wp_table_reloaded_change_table_shortcode' );

The code will change the Shortcode from [table id=1 /] to [[ranking id=1 /]]. Of course you can change ‘ranking’ to anything you like in the code above!

This code just needs to be copied into the file “wp-table-reloaded-extensions.php”, created according to these instructions (after the Plugin Header comment, but before the closing PHP bracket ?>). Then, just activate the new plugin “WP-Table Reloaded Extensions”, if you haven’t. That’s it! :-)

If you like this series of Extensions, I’m happy about any feedback, and especially about further suggestions!

Previous posts in this series that might interest you:

• Announcement and Foundation on Extensions
• Extension 1: Automatic URL to Links conversion
• Extension 2: Custom Name in the Admin Menu

Remember, Extensions are small code snippets that customize or extend the functionality of WP-Table Reloaded, by using the many “Plugin Hooks”. To get started, you should read the introduction on WP-Table Reloaded Extensions and follow the included instructions to set up the foundation. I also recommend reading the first post of this series, where I add an Automatic Converter for URLs to Links. You don’t need the code from there, but it might be helpful to better understand the concept.

In this post, I will show you how to change the name of the plugin in the WP Admin Menu. The default value is “WP-Table Reloaded” which might not be easy to recognize by clients or people using WordPress as a CMS. To better show, what I’m talking about: Here are two screenshots, one before activating the Extension and one after activating it.

The menu entry was changed from “WP-Table Reloaded” to “Tables”. (Remember that you can also move that entry to another parent entry with the corresponding admin option in the “Plugin Options” of WP-Table Reloaded.)

And here is the code:

/**
 * Changes the WP Admin Menu entry from "WP-Table Reloaded" to "Tables"
 * @author Tobias Baethge
 * @see http://tobias.baethge.com/2010/01/extension-2-custom-name-in-the-menu/
 */
function wp_table_reloaded_admin_menu_entry( $name ) {
    return 'Tables';
}
add_filter( 'wp_table_reloaded_plugin_display_name', 'wp_table_reloaded_admin_menu_entry' );

This code just needs to be copied into the file “wp-table-reloaded-extensions.php”, which needs to be created according to these instructions (after the Plugin Header comment, but before the closing PHP bracket ?>). Then, just activate the new plugin “WP-Table Reloaded Extensions”. That’s it! :-)

If you like this series of Extensions, I’m happy about any feedback, and especially about further suggestions!

Previous posts in this series that might interest you:

• Announcement and Foundation on Extensions
• Extension 1: Automatic URL to Links conversion