Feature Request: Hide repeating text in columns

[aavmurphy]

I wrote a plugin for this. It hides repeated-text (and it's table cell borders) in vertical columns. Its another way of 'grouping' content together (except that you use that word for something else. Its triggered by a class in the <th>. It works by adding a class to the td

So, a table like

a a a
a a b
a a c
a b a
a b b
b a a

Gets displayed as

a a a
    b
    c
a b a
    b
b a a

Best to get the idea with an example :

https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/walk/
https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/hills/munros/index.shtml

The CSS I use is

    .sp_col_show {
        background-color: white !important;  /* needed because of stripped rows */
        }

    .sp_col_hide {
        visibility: hidden;
        border-top: white !important;
        background-color: white !important; /* needed because of stripped rows */
        }

Thanks for your work. Its greatly appreciated!

[Mottie]

Hi @aavmurphy!

That looks like a great idea! Would you mind sharing the code in a PR or paste it here and I'll add it?

I would probably avoid setting the background color to white because of the different themes, but that can be fixed with css.

[aavmurphy]

If you give me some pointers, I'll try and do a PR myself, and then let you format it to your standards

[aavmurphy]

Just actually read what you wrote.

I'll tidy it, and PR it

[Mottie]

Cool! And also please include a license statement. This project is under MIT or GPL-2.0, so it would be great if you wanted to use the same or some similar open source license.

[aavmurphy]

@Mottie Done. Added a 'same as tablesorter' license.

[Mottie]

Sorry for taking so long to finally get this done... I had to tweak the code a little to make it work with multiple columns. Check out the demo.

[aavmurphy]

wow. great. going to use it now!
i like the way you've made it work for all columns, not just 'from the left'.

[aavmurphy]

@Mottie Great. Working. Thanks.

https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/walk/

Tweaked the CSS a little as I don't always use stripping, (and then use Bootstrap's '.table-striped' rather than the zebra widget).

Could zebra be an option?

(Using your doco example)

Click "first name" : "first name" is correct, but "day" isnt vertically-grouped

Shift-click "day" : now "day" is what I was looking for

i.e. could the algorithm always be run on all columns, not just the "sorting-on" ones?

[Mottie]

1. The zebra widget works best for filtered content, and in this case properly striping the grouped rows. Bootstrap's table stripe using the :nth-child selector which includes hidden rows, so the striping will look odd - try it out in this Bootstrap demo.
2. I think it is run on all columns, it's just the zebra striping that isn't run; I'll have to look at it again to make sure.