Angular Grid Row Editing

The Grid provides a convenient way to perform data manipulations through inline editing and a powerful API for Angular CRUD operations. Click on a row and press Enter key or simply double click with the mouse on the row that needs to be modified.

Angular Grid Row Editing Example

The following sample demonstrates how to enable row editing in the Grid. Changing a cell value and then clicking or navigating to another cell on the same row won't update the row value until confirmed by using the Done button, or discarded by using Cancel button.

Note

When a row is in edit mode, then clicking on a cell on another row will act like the Done button is pressed - submit all the changes of the previous row. If the new cell that gets focus is editable, then the new row also enters edit mode, while if the cell is not editable, then only the previous row exits edit mode.

Row Editing Usage

To get started import the IgxGridModule in the app.module.ts file:

// app.module.ts

...
import { IgxGridModule } from 'igniteui-angular';

@NgModule({
    ...
    imports: [..., IgxGridModule],
    ...
})
export class AppModule {}

Then define a Grid with bound data source and rowEditable set to true:

<igx-grid [data]="data" [primaryKey]="'ProductID'" width="100%" height="500px" [rowEditable]="true">
    <igx-column field="ProductID" header="Product ID" editable="false"></igx-column>
    <igx-column field="ReorderLevel" header="ReorderLever" [dataType]="'number'"></igx-column>
    <igx-column field="ProductName" header="ProductName" [dataType]="'string'"></igx-column>
    <igx-column field="UnitsInStock" header="UnitsInStock" [dataType]="'number'">
        <ng-template igxCellEditor let-cell="cell">
            <input name="units" [(ngModel)]="cell.value" style="color: black" />
        </ng-template>
    </igx-column>
    <igx-column field="OrderDate" [dataType]="'date'"></igx-column>
    <igx-column field="Discontinued" header="Discontinued" [dataType]="'boolean'"></igx-column>
</igx-grid>

Note

Setting primary key is mandatory for row editing operations.

Note

It's not needed to enable editing for individual columns. Using the rowEditable property in the Grid, will mean that all rows, with defined field property, excluding primary one, will be editable. If you want to disable editing for specific column, then you set the editable column's input to false.

import { Component, ViewChild } from '@angular/core';
import { data } from './data';
import { IgxGridComponent } from 'igniteui-angular';
// import { IgxGridComponent } from '@infragistics/igniteui-angular'; for licensed package

@Component({
    selector: 'app-grid-row-edit',
    styleUrls: [`grid-row-editing-sample.component.css`],
    templateUrl: 'grid-row-editing-sample.component.html'
})
export class GridRowEditSampleComponent {
    @ViewChild('gridRowEdit', { read: IgxGridComponent }) public gridRowEdit: IgxGridComponent;

    public data: any[];

    constructor() {
        this.data = data;
    }
}

Note

The Grid uses internally a provider IgxBaseTransactionService that holds pending cell changes, until row state submitted or cancelled.

Positioning

Default position of the overlay will be below the row that is in edit mode
If there is no space below the row then overlay will appear above the row.
Once shown - top or bottom, overlay will maintain this position during scrolling, until the overlay is closed.

Behavior

If row is in edit mode, then editing will continue, if a cell from the same row is clicked.
Clicking "Done" button will finish row editing and will submit changes either to the data source, or to a transaction if available. In addition row will exit edit mode.
Clicking "Cancel" button will revert all current changes in the row and row will exit edit mode.
If row is in edit mode, then clicking a cell from another row will finish the current row edit and will submit new row changes (the same behavior clicking "Done" button). If the new cell that gets focus is editable, then the new row also enters edit mode, while if the cell is not editable, then only the previous row exits edit mode.
If row is in edit mode and Grid is scrolled so that row goes outside the visible area, the latter will be still in edit mode. When Grid is scrolled, so that the row is visible again, the row will be still in edit mode. When clicked outside the Grid, the cell will also stay in edit mode.
When perform sorting, filtering, searching and hiding operations, will revert all current changes in the row and row will exit edit mode.
When perform paging, resizing, pinning and moving operations, will exit edit mode and will submit latest value.
Each modified cell gets edited style until row edit is finished. This is the behavior, when Grid is not provided with transactions. When transactions are available - then cell edit style is applied until all the changes are committed.

Enter and F2 enters row edit mode
Esc exits row edit mode and doesn't submit any of the cell changes, made while the row was in edit mode.
Tab move focus from one editable cell in the row to the next and from the right-most editable cell to the CANCEL and DONE buttons. Navigation from DONE button goes to the left-most editable cell within the currently edited row.

Feature Integration

Any data changing operation will terminate row editing operations and will submit current row changes. This will include operations like sorting, changing grouping and filtering criteria, paging, etc.
Summaries will be updated after row edit is finished. Same is valid for the other features like sorting, filtering, etc.
Expanding and collapsing grouped rows will not terminate editing for the current row.

Customizing Row Editing Overlay

Customizing Text

Customizing the text of the row editing overlay is possible using the igxRowEditTextDirective. The rowChangesCount property is exposed and it holds the count of the changed cells.

<ng-template igxRowEditText let-rowChangesCount>
	Changes: {{rowChangesCount}}
</ng-template>

Customizing Buttons

Customizing the buttons of the row editing overlay is possible using the igxRowEditActionsDirective. If you want the buttons to be part of the keyboard navigation, then each on of them should have the igxRowEditTabStopDirective.

<ng-template igxRowEditActions let-endRowEdit>
	<button igxButton igxRowEditTabStop (click)="endRowEdit(false)">Cancel</button>
	<button igxButton igxRowEditTabStop (click)="endRowEdit(true)">Apply</button>
</ng-template>

Styling

Using the Ignite UI for Angular Theme Library, we can greatly alter the Row Editing overlay. The Row Editing overlay is a composite element - its UI is comprised of a couple of other components: - igx-banner in order to render its contents - igx-buttons are rendered in the default template (for the Done and Cancel buttons).

In the below example, we will make use of those two components' styling options, ([button styling](../button.md#Angular Button Styling) & banner-styling), to customize the experience of our IgxGrid's Row Editing. We will also style the current cell's editor and background to make it more distinct. You can learn more about cell styling here.

Import theme

The easiest way to style the Row Editing banner is to define styles in our app's global style file (typically styles.scss). The first thing we need to do is import the themes/index file - this gives us access to all the powerful tools of the Ignite UI for Angular Sass framework:

@use "igniteui-angular/theming" as *;

// IMPORTANT: Prior to Ignite UI for Angular version 13 use:
// @import '~igniteui-angular/lib/core/styles/themes/index';

Once we've imported the themes file, we can create custom themes.

Define the theme

We can now define a custom banner theme that will affect our Row Editing background and make use of one of the predefined palettes namely $purple-palette :

    $my-light-gray: #e3e3e3;
    $my-banner-palette: $purple-palette;

    $banner-theme: banner-theme(
        $banner-background: $my-light-gray,
        $banner-message-color: color($my-banner-palette, "secondary", 600)
    );

Here we are using my-banner-palette in conjunction with igx-color (exposed by the theme library) for generating our colors.

Include the theme

All we have to do now is apply the theme with a Sass @include statement. We pass our newly defined $banner-theme through the igx-banner mixin:

@include banner($banner-theme);

This will apply our custom banner theme to the Row Editing overlay. However, since we defined these in the global styles file, these styles will also apply to all banners in our application.

Component styles

Since the Row Editing overlay makes use of a lot of other components' themes, styling it via the global styles can affect other parts of our application (e.g. banners, buttons, etc.). The best way to prevent that is to scope our banner theme. We can define our styles (including the theme/index import) in the component containing our igx-grid.

Note

If the component is using an Emulated ViewEncapsulation, it is necessary to penetrate this encapsulation using ::ng-deep in order to style the grid. We wrap the statement inside of a :host selector to prevent our styles from affecting elements outside of our component:

// custom.component.scss

:host {
    ::ng-deep {
        @include banner($banner-theme);
    }
}

With the above syntax, our custom banner theme properly applies to the grid's Row Editing overlay.

Custom Templates

To further customize our Row Editing overlay, we can pass a custom template so we can style the Done and Cancel buttons separately:

<!-- in component.html -->
<igx-grid>
    <ng-template igxRowEditActions let-endRowEdit>
        <div class="custom-buttons">
            <button igxIconButton="flat" class="custom-button" igxRowEditTabStop (click)="endRowEdit(false)">
                <igx-icon>clear</igx-icon>
            </button>
            <button igxIconButton="flat" class="custom-button" igxRowEditTabStop (click)="endRowEdit(true)">
                <igx-icon>check</igx-icon>
            </button>
        </div>
    </ng-template>
</igx-grid>

After we've defined our custom buttons, we can make use of the button-theme to style them. You can learn more about igx-button styling here. We can create a custom theme for our Done and Cancel:

// custom.component.scss
...

$button-theme: button-theme(
  $palette: $purple-palette
);

...
.custom-buttons {
    @include button($button-theme);
  }

We scope our @include statement in .custom-buttons so that it is only applied to the Doneand Cancel buttons.

Demo

After styling the banner and buttons, we also define a custom style for the cell in edit mode. The result of all the combined styles can be seen below:

Note

The sample will not be affected by the selected global theme from Change Theme.

Known Issues and Limitations

When the grid has no primaryKey set and remote data scenarios are enabled (when paging, sorting, filtering, scrolling trigger requests to a remote server to retrieve the data to be displayed in the grid), a row will lose the following state after a data request completes:
- Row Selection
- Row Expand/collapse
- Row Editing
- Row Pinning

API References

Additional Resources

Our community is active and always welcoming to new ideas.

Angular Grid Row Editing