I “posted(Advanced Table display using JSP Tags)”:http://www.magpiebrain.com/archives/000095.html a while back about my discovery of the “Display tag Library”:http://displaytag.sourceforge.net/, used to created tables in JSP pages. To recap the tag can handle formatting, automatic export options (Excel, CSV, XML), sorting and grouping with a minimum of fuss. Back then I was impressed just from reading the documentation and from viewing the “on line demos(Live Examples of the Displaytag library)”:http://www.displaytag.org/index.jsp. Now I’m impressed because I just used it to generate a very simple contacts list for our intranet, and it took me about 2 hours to download the taglib, install it, work out how to use it and then create a great looking table with sorting, grouping and CSV export. To be honest, I spent as much time playing with the CSS as anything else.
Next up, I think I’m going to look at a simple way of putting form controls in the table. A “prototype(Display tag library – Editable table implementation)”:http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=755192&group_id=73068&atid=536615 based on the Display Tag was built but it seems a little complex, and despite being posted several months ago it doesn’t seem to of been integrated in the code base yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with some simple extensions that don’t require too much coding.