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  Public Ticket #1798662
Do rows have IDs, referencing single cell data etc.
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  • maciejkpl started the conversation

    Hello,

    I'm looking for a plugin to help me build a webiste with a large number of products, with their data presented in a table and in icons. Here is a screenshot to help you understand how the final product is suppose to look like: https://imgur.com/a/H5Vw6hF

    This is my current workflow with its problems:
    1. We have a spreadsheet in Google Sheets with the data, separated into product categories by sheets.
    2. I export the CSV.
    3. Import into the TablePress plugin.
    4. Write shortcode to present it on the page. The things I have to write in the shortcode are which rows and columns to show and my custom column order (this is a important one). With the table you see I basically wrote to display row 1 (the header) and some rows that I manually choose. I cannot custom order the rows though. One thing to note, not always the first row is supposed to be the header. I have English headings in row 2, German in row 3, and I just switch the languages by choosing different row number. The first chosen row in the shortcode is displayed as a table header on the webpage itself.
    5. Write shortcodes for pulling single cell data to different places on the page, like in the icons.

    It works great overall, but it presents some problems. First of all, the spreadsheet is changing. When the data inside cells change, that's not a problem, I just overwrite the the imported CSV and that's great. But when the team adds more rows between the existing ones, my tables get shifted, because I have to reference the row numbers. If something that was row 10 changes to 13, I have to manually edit the shortcodes. Secondly, I have to still manually fill the icon data. 

    So, this is my 'dream' workflow and I'm asking if your plugin is capable of doing such things this or similiar way:
    1. I have a spreadsheet in Google Sheets combining every sheet/all product categories.
    2. I export the CSV.
    3. Import into your plugin. I'm overwriting an existing table, so if we have updated values, it updates them from the CSV. If I have new rows, it adds them. Now, if someone added rows between existing ones and shifted numbers around, would it know which ones are old to update the ones I now have in different places in my WordPress, and which ones are new? This part should be maintenence free from my side. I import the CSV = proper values get updated and the change is visible across the website. New products are new rows, and get added alongside existing ones, regardless of their position in the imported CSV.
    4. Write shortcode or some other method to display only the columns and rows I want and display a nice table similiar to the one in the screenshot on a page. On different page/different product, different columns and rows will be displayed. Now, are the columns and rows are referenced to by a static number or by some kind of ID? In my dream scenario, I would write a shortcode to display columns id-5, id-7, id-2, id-54 and rows id-451, id-871, id-12 in my custom order. In that case I wouldn't have a problem of shifting rows I've explained earlier. It wouldn't matter where in the row count is that row, because it would have it's unique ID, and the rest is only sorting.
    5. Write shortcodes for pulling single cell data to different places on the page, like in the icons. Also, product descriptions would ideally be stored in that table, to be pulled to a plain text in a paragraph for me to style in CSS etc. Again, referenced by ID, so shifting won't happen.
    6. When it comes to icons and data in them. For example I have a family of power supplies, and some of them have Input voltage value presented in a cell '220-300 VAC', other ones '100-240 VAC'. The workflow for these would be:
     a. I edit the table to have columns like 'Min. input voltage', and 'Max. input voltage', with the data in the rows 200 and 300 for one product, and 100 and 240 for the other. Both products are in the same product family, and that's pointed out in some other column, like 'Storm'.
     b. There's a column that combines the three, the min., the max., and throws in either VAC or VDC, called icon-text. That column sholud be programmed as such: if column productfamily=Storm, copy the lowest number value from column min-input-vol to column icon-text, there add a '-', then copy the highest number value from column max-input-vol to column icon-text, then add 'V' and then the text from column vol-type, either DC or AC. The finished automatically filled value in column icon-text would be '100-300 VAC', a value that I reference via pulling single cell data and put it in the icon. I am aware that I can provide this data in the CSV with calculations in Google Spreadsheet, but I'm wondering if the plugin itself has such capabilities.

    The thing is the most important is for the data to have some unique ID, not based on rows and their ability to import/overwrite/add new data without existing problems, building custom tables via shortcodes or some other method and referencing single cell data.

    Thanks in advance for the time you'll spend to research this and answer.

  •  471
    Isidora replied

    Hi maciejkpl,
    Thank you for your interest in wpdatatables.

    Unfortunately wpdatatables at the moment don't have feature that you can use single cell shortcode or to show custom columns or rows based on shortcode.

    Best regards.

    Kind Regards, 

    Isidora Markovic

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