Angular Grid Cell Editing
Ignite UI for Angular Grid component provides a great data manipulation capabilities and powerful API for Angular CRUD operations. By default the Grid is using in cell editing and different editors will be shown based on the column data type, thanks to the default cell editing template. In addition, you can define your own custom templates for update-data actions and to override the default behavior for committing and discarding any changes.
Angular Grid cell editing and edit templates Example
Note
By using igxCellEditor
with any type of editor component, the keyboard navigation flow will be disrupted. The same applies to direct editing of the custom cell that enters edit mode. This is because the focus
will remain on the cell element
, not on the editor component that we've added - igxSelect
, igxCombo
, etc. This is why we should take leverage of the igxFocus
directive, which will move the focus directly in the in-cell component and will preserve a fluent editing flow
of the cell/row.
Cell Editing
Editing through UI
You can enter edit mode for specific cell, when an editable cell is focused in one of the following ways:
- on double click;
- on single click - Single click will enter edit mode only if the previously selected cell was in edit mode and currently selected cell is editable. If the previously selected cell was not in edit mode, single click will select the cell without entering edit mode;
- on key press
Enter
; - on key press
F2
;
You can exit edit mode without committing the changes in one of the following ways:
- on key press
Escape
; - when you perform sorting, filtering, searching and hiding operations;
You can exit edit mode and commit the changes in one of the following ways:
- on key press
Enter
; - on key press
F2
; - on key press
Tab
; - on single click to another cell - when you click on another cell in the Grid, your changes will be submitted.
- operations like paging, resize, pin or move will exit edit mode and changes will be submitted.
Note
The cell remains in edit mode when you scroll vertically or horizontally or click outside the Grid. This is valid for both cell editing and row editing.
Editing through API
You can also modify the cell value through the IgxGrid API but only if primary key is defined:
public updateCell() {
this.grid1.updateCell(newValue, rowID, 'ReorderLevel');
}
Another way to update cell is directly through update
method of IgxGridCell
:
public updateCell() {
const cell = this.grid1.getCellByColumn(rowIndex, 'ReorderLevel');
// You can also get cell by rowID if primary key is defined
// cell = this.grid1.getCellByKey(rowID, 'ReorderLevel');
cell.update(70);
}
Cell Editing Templates
You can see and learn more for default cell editing templates in the general editing topic.
If you want to provide a custom template which will be applied when a cell is in edit mode, you can make use of the igxCellEditor
directive. To do this, you need to pass an ng-template
marked with the igxCellEditor
directive and properly bind your custom control to the cell.editValue
:
<igx-column field="class" header="Class" [editable]="true">
<ng-template igxCellEditor let-cell="cell" let-value>
<igx-select class="cell-select" [(ngModel)]="cell.editValue" [igxFocus]="true">
<igx-select-item *ngFor="let class of classes" [value]="class">
{{ class }}
</igx-select-item>
</igx-select>
</ng-template>
</igx-column>
This code is used in the sample below which implements an IgxSelectComponent
in the cells of the Race
, Class
and Alignment
columns.
Note
Any changes made to the cell's editValue
in edit mode, will trigger the appropriate editing event on exit and apply to the transaction state (if transactions are enabled).
Note
The cell template igxCell
controls how a column's cells are shown when outside of edit mode.
The cell editing template directive igxCellEditor
, handles how a column's cells in edit mode are displayed and controls the edited cell's edit value.
Note
By using igxCellEditor
with any type of editor component, the keyboard navigation flow will be disrupted. The same applies to direct editing of the custom cell that enters edit mode. This is because the focus
will remain on the cell element
, not on the editor component that we've added - igxSelect
, igxCombo
, etc. This is why we should take leverage of the igxFocus
directive, which will move the focus directly in the in-cell component and will preserve a fluent editing flow
of the cell/row.
For more information on how to configure columns and their templates, you can see the documentation for Grid Columns configuration.
Grid Excel Style Editing
Using Excel Style Editing allows the user to navigate trough the cells just as he would using the Excel, and ever so quickly edit them.
Implementing this custom functionality can be done by utilizing the events of the grid. First we hook up to the grid's keydown events, and from there we can implement two functionalities:
- Constant edit mode
public keydownHandler(event) {
const key = event.keyCode;
const grid = this.grid;
const activeElem = grid.navigation.activeNode;
if(
(key >= 48 && key <= 57) ||
(key >= 65 && key <= 90) ||
(key >= 97 && key <= 122)){
// Number or Alphabet upper case or Alphabet lower case
const columnName = grid.getColumnByVisibleIndex(activeElem.column).field;
const cell = grid.getCellByColumn(activeElem.row, columnName);
if (cell && !cell.editMode) {
cell.editMode = true;
cell.editValue = event.key;
this.shouldAppendValue = true;
} else if (cell && cell.editMode && this.shouldAppendValue) {
event.preventDefault();
cell.editValue = cell.editValue + event.key;
this.shouldAppendValue = false;
}
}
}
Enter
/Shift+Enter
navigation
if (key == 13) {
let thisRow = activeElem.row;
const column = activeElem.column;
const rowInfo = grid.dataView;
// to find the next eiligible cell, we will use a custom method that will check the next suitable index
let nextRow = this.getNextEditableRowIndex(thisRow, rowInfo, event.shiftKey);
// and then we will navigate to it using the grid's built in method navigateTo
this.grid.navigateTo(nextRow, column, (obj) => {
obj.target.activate();
this.grid.clearCellSelection();
this.cdr.detectChanges();
});
}
Key parts of finding the next eligible index would be:
//first we check if the currently selected cell is the first or the last
if (currentRowIndex < 0 || (currentRowIndex === 0 && previous) || (currentRowIndex >= dataView.length - 1 && !previous)) {
return currentRowIndex;
}
// in case using shift + enter combination, we look for the first suitable cell going up the field
if(previous){
return dataView.findLastIndex((rec, index) => index < currentRowIndex && this.isEditableDataRecordAtIndex(index, dataView));
}
// or for the next one down the field
return dataView.findIndex((rec, index) => index > currentRowIndex && this.isEditableDataRecordAtIndex(index, dataView));
Please check the full sample for further reference:
Angular Grid Excel Style Editing Sample
Main benefits of the above approach include:
- Constant edit mode: typing while a cell is selected will immediately enter edit mode with the value typed, replacing the existing one
- Any non-data rows are skipped when navigating with
Enter
/Shift+Enter
. This allows users to quickly cycle through their values.
CRUD operations
Note
Please keep in mind that when you perform some CRUD operation all of the applied pipes like filtering, sorting and grouping will be re-applied and your view will be automatically updated.
The IgxGridComponent
provides a straightforward API for basic CRUD operations.
Adding a new record
The Grid component exposes the addRow
method which will add the provided data to the data source itself.
// Adding a new record
// Assuming we have a `getNewRecord` method returning the new row data.
const record = this.getNewRecord();
this.grid.addRow(record);
Updating data in the Grid
Updating data in the Grid is achieved through updateRow
and updateCell
methods but only if primary key for the grid is defined. You can also directly update a cell and/or a row value through their respective update
methods.
// Updating the whole row
this.grid.updateRow(newData, this.selectedCell.cellID.rowID);
// Just a particular cell through the Grid API
this.grid.updateCell(newData, this.selectedCell.cellID.rowID, this.selectedCell.column.field);
// Directly using the cell `update` method
this.selectedCell.update(newData);
// Directly using the row `update` method
const row = this.grid.getRowByKey(rowID);
row.update(newData);
Deleting data from the Grid
Please keep in mind that deleteRow()
method will remove the specified row only if primary key is defined.
// Delete row through Grid API
this.grid.deleteRow(this.selectedCell.cellID.rowID);
// Delete row through row object
const row = this.grid.getRowByIndex(rowIndex);
row.delete();
These can be wired to user interactions, not necessarily related to the igx-grid; for example, a button click:
<button igxButton igxRipple (click)="deleteRow($event)">Delete Row</button>
Cell validation on edit event
Using the grid's editing events we can alter how the user interacts with the grid.
In this example, we'll validate a cell based on the data entered in it by binding to the cellEdit
event. If the new value of the cell does not meet our predefined criteria, we'll prevent it from reaching the data source by cancelling the event (event.cancel = true
). We'll also display a custom error message using IgxToast
.
The first thing we need to is bind to the grid's event:
<igx-grid (cellEdit)="handleCellEdit($event)"
...>
...
</igx-grid>
The cellEdit
emits whenever any cell's value is about to be committed. In our handleCellEdit
definition, we need to make sure that we check for our specific column before taking any action:
export class MyGridEventsComponent {
public handleCellEdit(event: IGridEditEventArgs): void {
const column = event.column;
if (column.field === 'Ordered') {
const rowData = event.rowData;
if (!rowData) {
return;
}
if (event.newValue > rowData.UnitsInStock) {
event.cancel = true;
this.toast.open();
}
}
}
}
If the value entered in a cell under the Ordered column is larger than the available amount (the value under Units in Stock), the editing will be cancelled and a toast with an error message will be displayed.
The result of the above validation being applied to our igx-grid
can be seen in the below demo:
Styling
The IgxGrid allows for its cells to be styled through the Ignite UI for Angular Theme Library. The grid's theme exposes a wide range of properties, which allow users to style many different aspects of the grid.
In the below steps, we are going to go over how you can style the grid's cell in edit mode and how you can scope those styles.
In order to use the Ignite UI Theming Library, we must first import the theme index
file in our global styles:
Importing style library
@use "igniteui-angular/theming" as *;
// IMPORTANT: Prior to Ignite UI for Angular version 13 use:
// @import '~igniteui-angular/lib/core/styles/themes/index';
Now we can make use of all of the functions exposed by the Ignite UI for Angular theme engine.
Defining a palette
After we've properly imported the index file, we create a custom palette that we can use. Let's define two colors that we like and use them to build a palette with igx-palette
:
$white: #fff;
$blue: #4567bb;
$color-palette: palette($primary: $white, $secondary: $blue);
Defining themes
We can now define the theme using our palette. The cells are styled by the grid-theme
, so we can use that to generate a theme for our IgxGrid:
$custom-grid-theme: grid-theme(
$cell-editing-background: $blue,
$cell-edited-value-color: $white,
$cell-active-border-color: $white,
$edit-mode-color: color($color-palette, "secondary", 200)
);
Applying the theme
The easiest way to apply our theme is with a sass
@include
statement in the global styles file:
@include grid($custom-grid-theme);
This way, the theme will apply to all grids in our application. If we wish to apply this custom styling only to a specific component, we need to scope the theme.
Scoped component theme
In order for the custom theme to affect only our specific component, we can move all of the styles we just defined from the global styles file to our custom component's style file (including the import of the index
file).
This way, due to Angular's ViewEncapsulation
, our styles will be applied only to our custom component.
Note
If the component is using an Emulated
ViewEncapsulation, it is necessary to penetrate this encapsulation using ::ng-deep
in order to style the grid.
Note
We wrap the statement inside of a :host
selector to prevent our styles from affecting elements outside of our component:
:host {
::ng-deep {
@include grid($custom-grid-theme);
}
}
}
Styling Demo
In addition to the steps above, we can also style the controls that are used for the cells' editing templates: igx-input-group
, igx-datepicker
& igx-checkbox
Note
The sample will not be affected by the selected global theme from Change Theme
.
API References
- IgxGridCell
- IgxGridComponent Styles
- IgxGridRow
- IgxInputDirective
- IgxDatePickerComponent
- IgxDatePickerComponent Styles
- IgxCheckboxComponent
- IgxCheckboxComponent Styles
- IgxOverlay
- IgxOverlay Styles
Additional Resources
- Build CRUD operations with igxGrid
- Grid overview
- Virtualization and Performance
- Paging
- Filtering
- Sorting
- Summaries
- Column Pinning
- Column Resizing
- Selection
- Searching