One of the new components we just unveiled for the Ext JS 3.3 beta is PivotGrid. PivotGrid is a powerful new component that reduces and aggregates large datasets into a more understandable form.

A classic example of PivotGrid's usefulness is in analyzing sales data. Companies often keep a database containing all the sales they have made and want to glean some insight into how well they are performing. PivotGrid gives the ability to rapidly summarize this large and unwieldy dataset - for example showing sales count broken down by city and salesperson.

A simple example

We created an example of this scenario in the 3.3 beta release. Here we have a fictional dataset containing 300 rows of sales data (see the raw data). We asked PivotGrid to break the data down by Salesperson and Product, showing us how they performed over time. Each cell contains the sum of sales made by the given salesperson/product combination in the given city and year.

Let's see how we create this PivotGrid:

var SaleRecord = Ext.data.Record.create([
    {name: 'person',   type: 'string'},
    {name: 'product',  type: 'string'},
    {name: 'city',     type: 'string'},
    {name: 'state',    type: 'string'},
    {name: 'month',    type: 'int'},
    {name: 'quarter',  type: 'int'},
    {name: 'year',     type: 'int'},
    {name: 'quantity', type: 'int'},
    {name: 'value',    type: 'int'}
]);

var myStore = new Ext.data.Store({
    url: 'salesdata.json',
    autoLoad: true,
    reader: new Ext.data.JsonReader({
        root: 'rows',
        idProperty: 'id'
    }, SaleRecord)
});

var pivotGrid = new Ext.grid.PivotGrid({
    title     : 'Sales Performance',
    store     : myStore,
    aggregator: 'sum',
    measure   : 'value',
    
    leftAxis: [
        {dataIndex: 'person',  width: 80},
        {dataIndex: 'product', width: 90}
    ],
    
    topAxis: [
        {dataIndex: 'year'},
        {dataIndex: 'city'}
    ]
});

Sometimes we want to print things, like grids or trees. The Ext JS printing plugin is pretty good for that. But what if we want to export them instead? Enter Ext.ux.Exporter.

Ext.ux.Exporter allows any store-based component (such as grids) to be exported, locally, to Excel or any other format. It does not require any server side programming - the export document is generated on the fly, entirely in JavaScript.

The extension serves as a base for exporting any kind of data, but comes bundled with a .xls export formatter suitable for exporting any Grid straight to Excel. Here's how to do that:

var grid = new Ext.grid.GridPanel({
  store: someStore,
  tbar : [
    {
      xtype: 'exportbutton',
      store: someStore
    }
  ],
  //your normal grid config goes here
});

Clicking the Download button in the top toolbar iterates over the data in the store and creates an Excel file locally, before Base64 encoding it and redirecting the browser via a data url. If you have Excel or a similar program installed your browser should ask you to save the file or open it with Excel.

The RowEditor plugin was recently added to the ExtJS examples page. It works a lot like a normal Grid Editor, except you can edit several fields on a given row at once before saving.

This neatly solves the problem of adding a new row to an editor grid, entering data into the first field and finding it save itself straight away, which is rarely desired. In this fashion we can provide full CRUD for simple models in a single page.

Installation

You'll need to get a copy of the javascript, css and images from the server. This is a bit of a pain. If you still have the ExtJS SDK around you can find these in the examples folder, if not you can get each file as follows:

Grab the plugin JS file below and put it where you usually put your .js files: http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/ux/RowEditor.js

This needs to go with your other stylesheets, usually in a directory called 'css': http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/ux/css/RowEditor.css

Download these two images and put them into your existing 'images' folder (the same place the other ExtJS images live): http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/ux/images/row-editor-bg.gif http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/ux/images/row-editor-btns.gif

After my recent foray into printing grids with ExtJS, I realised I needed to print some trees too. Seeing as some of the work was already done for the Grid example, it made sense to create a common API for printing any Ext.Component. And thus Ext.ux.Printer was born:

var grid = new Ext.grid.GridPanel({ // just a normal grid });
var tree = new Ext.tree.ColumnTree({ // just a normal column tree });

Ext.ux.Printer.print(grid);
Ext.ux.Printer.print(tree);

Each of the above opens a new window, renders some HTML (just a big table really), prints it and closes the window - all client side with no server side code required. Although trees and grids represent data quite differently internally, we can use the same API on Ext.ux.Printer to print them both.

Ext.ux.Printer uses Renderer classes to cope with a specific xtype, and adding Renderers for other components is easy. At the moment Ext.grid.GridPanel and Ext.tree.ColumnTree are supported out of the box, but let's see how we'd add support for printing the contents of an Ext.Panel:

Sometimes you'll be using a Paging Toolbar on a grid and need to give the user the ability to change the number of records per page. One way of doing this is by adding a combobox to the toolbar:

var combo = new Ext.form.ComboBox({
  name : 'perpage',
  width: 40,
  store: new Ext.data.ArrayStore({
    fields: ['id'],
    data  : [
      ['15'], 
      ['25'],
      ['50']
    ]
  }),
  mode : 'local',
  value: '15',

  listWidth     : 40,
  triggerAction : 'all',
  displayField  : 'id',
  valueField    : 'id',
  editable      : false,
  forceSelection: true
});

We've set up a simple combo box which allows the user to choose between 15, 25 and 50 records per page. Now let's set up a Paging Toolbar, and a listener to take action when the user changes the selection in the combo box:

var bbar = new Ext.PagingToolbar({
  store:       store, //the store you use in your grid
  displayInfo: true,
  items   :    [
    '-',
    'Per Page: ',
    combo
  ]
});

combo.on('select', function(combo, record) {
  bbar.pageSize = parseInt(record.get('id'), 10);
  bbar.doLoad(bbar.cursor);
}, this);

Grids are one of the most widely used components in Ext JS, and often represent data that the user would like to print. As the grid is usually part of a wider application, simply printing the page isn't often a good solution.

You could attach a stylesheet with media="print", which hides all of the other items on the page, though this is rather application-specific, and a pain to update. It would be far better to have a reusable way of printing the data from any grid.

The way I went about this was to open up a new window, build a table containing the grid data into the new window, then print it and close. It's actually pretty simple, and with a bit of CSS we can even get the printable view looking like it does in the grid.

Here's how you use it (this is a slightly modified version of the Array Grid Example):

var grid = new Ext.grid.GridPanel({
  store  : store,
  columns: [
      {header: "Company",      width: 160, dataIndex: 'company'},
      {header: "Price",        width: 75,  dataIndex: 'price', renderer: 'usMoney'},
      {header: "Change",       width: 75,  dataIndex: 'change'},
      {header: "% Change",     width: 75,  dataIndex: 'pctChange'}
      {header: "Last Updated", width: 85,  dataIndex: 'lastChange', renderer: Ext.util.Format.dateRenderer('m/d/Y')}
  ],
  title:'Array Grid',
  tbar : [
    {
      text   : 'Print',
      iconCls: 'print',
      handler: function() {
        Ext.ux.GridPrinter.print(grid);
      }
    }
  ]
});

Say you have a simple Ext store:

var myStore = new Ext.data.Store({
  url:    '/widgets.json',
  reader: someReader
});

Which you put in a grid, along with a paging toolbar:

var myGrid = new Ext.grid.GridPanel({
  store:   myStore,
  columns: [.....],
  bbar:    new Ext.PagingToolbar({
    store: myStore
  })
  ... etc ...
});

Your grid loads up and the store performs a GET request to /widgets.json, which returns your widgets along with a total (see an example).

Awesome, but now we click one of the paging buttons on the PagingToolbar and we have a problem - our request has turned into POST /widgets.json, with "start=20" and "limit=20" as POST params.