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A Happy New Your to everyone! 2012 starts with a maintenance release of WP-Table Reloaded. The automatic update for version 1.9.3 should be available in your WordPress Dashboard shortly.

I’m especially happy about the improved integration in the WordPress search, which should lead to better search results when searching for content in tables. Also, a small change in the default CSS code (thanks to Allan Jardine) should lead to less trouble with blank space below tables (which some users experienced).

The other changes in WP-Table Reloaded 1.9.3 mostly consist of bugfixes and improvements:

• enhancement: reduce problems with blank space below tables, caused by a no-longer necessary minimum height
• enhancement: improve behavior and returned results of integration of the WP search
• enhancement: many improvements to the performance of JavaScript code on the WP-Table Reloaded screens
• enhancement: more possibilities for developer interaction (additional plugin filters, etc.)
• bugfix: fixed naming of the sorting arrow images, which where pointing in the wrong direction
• bugfix: fixes to handling of the “Insert Image” thickbox
• bugfix: minor fixes to logical errors in JavaScript code on the WP-Table Reloaded screens
• IMPORTANT: Dropped support for outdated WordPress 3.0 (I always recommend using the newest version!)
• languages: Added Bulgarian

You can download WP-Table Reloaded 1.9.3 from the plugin’s page or from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you like the plugin, I’d be very happy if you would give it a high rating 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 and maintain 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 before asking for support, as this will make it easier for me to provide support. A lot of questions are already answered in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

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After almost seven long months of waiting, a new version of WP-Table Reloaded is finally available. The automatic update for version 1.9.2 should be available in your WordPress Dashboard shortly.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints from work, university studies, and family life, I was not able to publish this new version earlier, but finally had some time now. I really want to apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused, e.g. because you were affected by the fixed bugs. I did however try to keep the level of support in the WP support forums up, which hopefully compensates for this.

The changes in WP-Table Reloaded 1.9.2 include several bugfixes and improvements:

• bugfix: Correct column width of “Edit” screen input fields in Internet Explorer 9
• bugfix: Moved columns/rows were not moved to the correct place
• bugfix: Restore functionality of the “Delete” link on the “List of Tables”
• feature: Updated DataTables JavaScript library to 1.8.2
• enhancement: cleaned up and optimized some code for better compatibility, adjustments to current WordPress versions
• IMPORTANT: Dropped support for outdated WordPress versions 2.8 and 2.9
• languages: Irish and Portuguese (Portugal), updated other languages

You can download WP-Table Reloaded 1.9.2 from the plugin’s page or from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you like the plugin, I’d be very happy if you would give it a high rating 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 and maintain 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 before asking for support, as this will make it easier for me to provide support. A lot of questions are already answered in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

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A long time has gone by without a release of WP-Table Reloaded, but now, a new version of the plugin is ready. The automatic update for WP-Table Reloaded 1.9 should be available in your WordPress Dashboard shortly.

UPDATE: Due to a bug in the update handling that could arise in certain scenarios, version 1.9.1 has been released with a quick fix.

There are no really big new features, but the included changes should be very handy for a lot of people:

• feature: option to have the generated table HTML cached in a WordPress transient for faster page generation
• feature: Tables can get additional custom CSS classes, e.g. for easier layout and styling, and grouping tables.
• feature: Updated DataTables JavaScript library to 1.7.5
• enhancement: adjustments to make the plugin work better with WordPress 3.1
• enhancement: Add cell content as a parameter for the CSS class filter
• enhancement: Additional ID-based CSS classes for the table name and description texts
• enhancement: JavaScript features on “List of Tables” screen can be customized more
• enhancement: cleaned up and optimized some code
• languages: Added Dutch and Indonesian, updated other languages

Personally, I really like the caching feature, because with that, generated table HTML code can now be cached, so that subsequent page loads are faster (HTML generation is not very fast and only necessary when a table is updated). Also, the custom CSS classes for tables should help a lot of people, because with them, styling tables with existing CSS code has become easier. This allows grouping of tables with the same layout more easily.

You can download WP-Table Reloaded 1.9 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.

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The automatic update for WP-Table Reloaded 1.8 should be available in your WordPress admin area shortly. With that, a long period of time without an upgrade has finally ended.

Changes are:

• feature: Updated JavaScript libraries to DataTables 1.7 and TableTools 1.1.4
• enhancement: Template tag functions now accept strings and arrays for passing parameters
• enhancement: Backwards compatibility for deprecated functions, no longer use them
• enhancement: Sort on “Edit” screen no longer moves header or footer row, if they are activated
• enhancement: Added plugin filter hook to change table content prior to rendering
• enhancement: Added “summary” attribute filter for <table> HTML element
• enhancement: RTL-languages supported in frontend CSS
• enhancement: Adjusted default CSS for new default theme “TwentyTen”
• bugfix: Fixed search to not find table IDs with the same beginning
• bugfix: Fixed problem with certain call-by-reference functions in certain versions of PHP
• bugfix: valid HTML on “Plugin Options” screen
• bugfix: Fixed notice due to not initialized variable
• bugfix: Fixed DataTables translations for Danish and Norwegian
• languages: Added Polish and Belarusian
• languages: Added Romanian for DataTables

You can download WP-Table Reloaded 1.8 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! :-)

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

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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.

UPDATE for WP-Table Reloaded 1.9: Please see the note below the code, regarding the deactivation of the “Cache Table Output” feature!

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 ?>).

ATTENTION: One additional change is required (since WP-Table Reloaded 1.9): You must turn off the “Cache Table Output” feature in the “Table Styling Options” section on the “Edit” screen of the table! Otherwise you will get the same filtering result on all pages where the table is shown.

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 webspace or cheap dedicated 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

* Words from our friends at Webhostingsearch