I’ve discovered a trick in Glide Tables that I didn’t knew.
If I add a column name like this name1/name2 … name1 will become a directory for the columns that have name1 like that in front.
Are there any other tricks like this that could help ? This is very useful when you have a big table with a lot of columns
Is there a way to hide all fields in a directory or also to group them like that in the screen and put a visibility condition for the entire directory ? - this will be nice for fields that are for people or companies etc…
The feature you describe in Glide Tables is called column grouping. It is useful, as you’ve discovered, to group columns.
I don’t think we can say the columns end up in a directory, they are grouped. But I see what you mean.
You may opt for different approaches when grouping columns to keep them organized.
Some group columns by type: basic, math, template, relation, lookup, single value, etc.
Some do the same by using abbreviations because column names can become long: mth for math, tp for template, rel for relation, lk for lookup, sv for single value, etc.
Some group columns together that are used to build out a feature or final computed column. Feature1/columnA , Feature1/columnB , etc.
Other related tricks:
In the data editor, if you click on the name of the group, the columns will collapse like an accordion, thus saving real estate on your screen.
In the builder, when pointing components to columns, the groups will allow you to find the column more quickly if your grouping and column naming is clean.
You can drag columns right and left to order them as you wish within your group.
To add a column within a group, do an “Add column right” and then change the type immediately. This will prevent you from having to drag a new column that would otherwise have been added to the very right of your table.
If you do have a column that you need to drag far, put a random prefix like “xyz” in the name of that column and the column you want to drag it next to. In “Search columns”, type “xyz”. Drag your right column to the left of the left column. Delete “xyz” in the search bar. Your two columns will now be next to one another. Remove the “xyz” prefix for the column names.
In the dropdown menu of each column, “Find uses” is also a wonderful feature to help you keep your tables clean.
I’m not too sure what you mean by visibility conditions applying to a group of columns. Visibility conditions apply to components or screens in the builder, whereas column grouping is simply a way of visually bringing columns together. Column grouping does not have any effect on the data such as filtering or grouping records/rows.
