Grid Interface

This section details the public interface that your application can use to interact with the grid, including methods, properties and events.

The grid interface is the combination of the following items:

• Grid Properties: properties used to configure the grid, e.g. pagination = true.
• Grid API: methods used to interact with the grid after it's created, e.g. api.getSelectedRows().
• Grid Events: events published by the grid to inform applications of changes in state, e.g. rowSelected.
• Grid Callbacks: callbacks are used by the grid to retrieve required information from your application, e.g. getRowHeight().
• Row Node: each row in the grid is represented by a Row Node object, which in turn has a reference to the piece of row data provided by the application. The Row Node wraps the row data item. The Row Node has attributes, methods and events for interacting with the specific row e.g. rowNode.setSelected(true).

Grid Options

The gridOptions object is a 'one stop shop' for the entire interface into the grid. The grid options can be used regardless of the framework you are using, but if you are using a framework you might find it easier to use your framework's bindings. How to configure for a particular framework is explained further down this page.

The example below shows the different types of items available on gridOptions.

var gridOptions = {
    // PROPERTIES
    // Objects like myRowData and myColDefs would be created in your application
    rowData: myRowData,
    columnDefs: myColDefs,
    pagination: true,
    rowSelection: 'single',

    // EVENTS
    // Add event handlers
    onRowClicked: function(event) { console.log('A row was clicked'); },
    onColumnResized: function(event) { console.log('A column was resized'); },
    onGridReady: function(event) { console.log('The grid is now ready'); },

    // CALLBACKS
    isScrollLag: function() { return false; }
}

Once the grid is initialised, you will also have access to the grid API (api) and column API (columnApi) on the gridOptions object as shown:

// refresh the grid
gridOptions.api.refreshView();

// resize columns in the grid to fit the available space
gridOptions.columnApi.sizeColumnsToFit();

Listening to Events

In addition to adding event listeners directly via the gridOptions object, it is possible to register for events, similar to registering for events on native DOM elements. This means there are two ways to listen for events: either to use the onXXX() method on the API (where XXX is replaced with the event name), or to register for the event. The latter option allows you to add multiple handlers for the same event. The following example demonstrates the two options:

// create handler function
function myRowClickedHandler(event) {
    console.log('The row was clicked');
}

// option 1: use the API
gridOptions.onRowClicked = myRowClickedHandler;

// option 2: register the handler
gridOptions.api.addEventListener('rowClicked', myRowClickedHandler);

Events Are Asynchronous

Grid events are asynchronous so that the state of the grid will be settled by the time your event callback gets invoked.

Default Boolean Properties

Where the property is a boolean (true or false), then false (or left blank) is the default value. For this reason, on / off items are presented in a way that causes the most common behaviour to be used when the value is false. For example, suppressCellSelection is named as such because most people will want cell selection to be enabled.

Vanilla JavaScript

For plain Javascript, all of your interaction with ag-Grid will be through gridOptions.

Polymer

The gridOptions are fully available, but you can also advantage of the properties and events provided by ag-Grid's Polymer Component. This is done as follows:

Properties

Properties on ag-grid-polymer can be provided in the following three ways:

• LowerCase: rowanimation
• CamelCase: rowAnimation
• Hyphenated Lowercase: row-animation

You can specify the properties in the following ways:

• On the ag-grid-polymercomponent at declaration time
• On the gridOptions property

Properties on ag-grid-polymer

<ag-grid-polymer rowData="{{rowData}}" rowAnimation pivot-mode></ag-grid-polymer>

Here we've specified three properties: rowData is provided with two-way binding, and rowAnimation and pivot-mode illustrate how you can specify properties using different cases.

Events

All data out of the grid comes through events. You can specify the events you want to listen to in the following ways:

• On the ag-grid-polymercomponent at declaration time
• On the gridOptions property
• On the ag-grid-polymercomponent post creation time, via event listeners
• On the ag-grid-polymercomponent post creation time, via direct property access

Events on ag-grid-polymer

<ag-grid-polymer onGridReady="{{onGridReady}}"></ag-grid-polymer>

Here we're listening to the gridReady event - as with most events we need to add the "on" prefix.

Events via the gridOptions property

<ag-grid-polymer gridOptions="{{gridOptions}}"></ag-grid-polymer>

this.gridOptions.onColumnResized = event => {
    console.log('Event via option 1: ' + event);
};

Events via Event Listeners on an instance of ag-grid-polymer

<ag-grid-polymer id="myGrid"></ag-grid-polymer>

this.$.myGrid.addEventListener('columnresized', event => {
    console.log('Event via option 2: ' + event.agGridDetails);
});

In this case we need to specify an ID on the ag-grid-polymer component in order to access it.

The grid's payload will be available on the event's agGridDetails property.

Events via direct property access on an instance of ag-grid-polymer

<ag-grid-polymer id="myGrid"></ag-grid-polymer>

this.$.myGrid.oncolumnresized = event => {
    console.log('Event via option 3: ' + event.agGridDetails);
};

In this case we need to specify an ID on the ag-grid-polymer component in order to access it.

The grid's payload will be available on the event's agGridDetails property.

Grid API

The Grid API (both api and columnApi) will only be available after the gridReady event has been fired.

You can access the APIs in the following ways:

• Store them from the gridReady event - they'll be available via the params argument passed into the event
• Provide a gridOptions object to the grid pre-creation time. Post-creation the APIs will be available on the gridOptions object.

Web Components

The gridOptions are fully available for Web Components. However you can take advantage of Web Components attributes for setting properties and also directly accessing the Web Components DOM object for interacting with the component. This is done as follows:

• Attributes: attributes are defined as normal HTML attributes and set non-bound values.
• Properties: properties are set directly onto the DOM object using JavaScript.
• Callbacks: callbacks, like properties, are also set directly on the DOM object using JavaScript.
• Event Handlers: event handlers are registered as normal DOM event handlers, using either addEventListener(eventName, handler) or assigning an onXXX method on the DOM object.
• API: The grid API and column API are accessible through the DOM object.

Bindings are registered using their 'dash' syntax and not camel-case. For example, the property rowAnimation is bound using row-animation.

Properties and callbacks are set using standard camel-case; no changes are made.

Web Components Events are all done using lowercase. This keeps the event handling consistent with native DOM elements, but breaks away from the camel-case of how events are managed by the other frameworks ag-Grid supports.

This example shows setting up as a Web Component in HTML. Notice it's similar to Angular, but without binding of properties or event handling.

<ag-grid
   // normal ID for CSS selector inside JavaScript
   id="myGrid"

   // these are boolean values, which if included without a value, default to true
   row-animation

   // these are attributes, not bound, give explicit values here
   row-height="22"
   row-selection="multiple">
</ag-grid>

Then the callbacks and event handling are done in JavaScript as follows:

var myGrid = document.querySelector('#myGrid');

// calling a method directly on the ag-Grid DOM element.
// calling setGridOptions starts up the grid and is mandatory (even if gridOptions is empty)
myGrid.setGridOptions(gridOptions);

// add events to grid, option 1 - add an event listener
myGrid.addEventListener('columnresized', function(event) {
    console.log('Got an event via option 1');
});

// add events to grid, option 2 - callback on the element
myGrid.oncolumnresized = function(event) {
    console.log('Got an event via option 2');
};

// add events to grid, option 3 - callback on the grid options
// remember we can still use everything in gridOptions, the
// Web Components features are all in addition
gridOptions.onColumnResized = function(event) {
    console.log('Got an event via option 3');
};

// call something on the API
myGrid.api.refreshView();
myGrid.columnApi.sizeColumnsToFit();

// change a property
myGrid.quickFilterText = 'sandy';
myGrid.showToolPanel = true;

Next Steps

That's it, Doc! Now you know how to interface with the grid. Go now and find out about all the great properties, methods, callbacks and events you can use.