Hide identical cells on consecutive rows

LePatay

[To move to "Feature requests"?]

Hi everyone,

I have failed finding this (basic?) feature documented anywhere, so I had to write some piece of code instead.

In my table, I wanted to hide the repeated content of similar consecutive rows, like so:
http://jsfiddle.net/bbLjzspf/10232/
It kinda looks like a RowGroup matter, but you can't do it simply with RowGroup.

This is the code I used, plugin-free:

  var myTable;
  var classHidden = "transparent";

  myTable = $('#example').DataTable({
    data: dataSet,
    columns: columnDefs,
    fnRowCallback: function(nRow, aData, iDisplayIndex, iDisplayIndexFull) {
      var bHide = false;
      // _RD Ignore 1st row
      if (iDisplayIndex > 0) {
        // _RD If current data and previously stored data have the same number of cells (should always be the case?)
        if (aData.length == prevData.length) {
          // _RD Compare a given column
          var columnChecked = 0;
          var oldOffice = prevData[columnChecked];
          var newOffice = aData[columnChecked];
          // _RD If the rows match
          if (oldOffice == newOffice) {
            // _RD Tells the row data should be hidden
            bHide = true;
          }
        }
      }
      // _RD Cell(s) to hide or unhide
      var FirstCellToHide = 0;
      var nbOfCellsToHide = 1;
      var cellsToHide = $("td", nRow).slice(FirstCellToHide, nbOfCellsToHide - FirstCellToHide);
      // _RD If the rows should be hidden
      if (bHide) {
        // _RD Hide the cells (Note: "display: none" and "visibility: hidden" don't perform as expected)
        cellsToHide.addClass(classHidden);
      } else {
        // _RD Display the cells back
        cellsToHide.removeClass(classHidden);
      }
      // _RD Save the data from the current row
      prevData = aData;
      // _RD Return the treated row
      return nRow;
    }
  });
<style type="text-css">
    .transparent {
      color: transparent;
    }
</style>

Maybe someone else will have the time to implement this feature?

Various options I can think of:
* N°s of the columns (visible or not) to compare rows from
* N°s of the columns to hide when row has been found similar
* OR: One-line default option : "starting from the left, hide all similar columns over consecutive rows"
* Way to hide the repeated cells: transparent text (default), transparent cell including border, hidden cell, partially lowered opacity ...
* Other styling: remove borders inside a so-called "row group", unify the background color, add separation borders.

Thus, one could easily generate ligthened tables like that one:

colin

Hi @LePatay ,

You could do something like my last comment in this thread - I suspect that will do what you want.

Cheers,

Colin

LePatay

Hi colin,

I wasn't able to find the mentioned post in my original search, but it matches the "auto-hide repeated data" request of mine pretty well, thanks.

However, I think it might still be useful to implement something similar to "RowGroup", that only hides custom columns, without creating a new formatting.