liumiaowilson/customInlineEditDatatable

Custom Inline Edit Datatable is a valid and effective approach to high quality inline edit support for lightning datatable.

Custom Inline Edit Datatable

Custom Inline Edit Datatable is a valid and effective approach to high quality inline edit support for lightning datatable.

Get Started

This lwc component has a combobox inline editor for datatable as an example. You are welcome to add your own custom inline edit support as well.

The first and most important step to declare your custom inline edit support is to extend from lightning datatable and add your own type.

Here is the code:

export default class CustomInlineEditDatatable extends LightningDatatable {
    static customTypes = {
        combobox: {
            template: viewer,
            editTemplate: editor,
            typeAttributes: ['options'],
            standardCellLayout: true,
        },
    };
}

Note that besides the normal template attribute, we also add editTemplate attribute here. typeAttributes can be used both in template and editTemplate. Also, standardCellLayout has to be set to true to enable custom inline edit support.

Next, if you want to use simple base lightning component as the inline editor, you can go with this in your editTemplate html file.

<template>
    <lightning-input
        name="edit"
        label="Edit"
        data-inputable="true"
        value={editedValue}
    >
    </lightning-input>
</template>

editedValue is used to pass in the current edited value and the new edited value will be passed out by bubbling of change events.

If you want to have a more complicated implementation of the inline editor, then you can create a custom lwc component like below:

export default class ComboboxDatatype extends LightningElement {
    _value = null;
    @api
    get value() {
        return this._value;
    }

    set value(val) {
        this._value = val;
    }

    @api options = [];

    handleChange(e) {
        e.stopPropagation();

        this._value = e.detail.value;

        this.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent('change', {
            bubbles: true,
            composed: true,
            detail: {
                value: this._value,
            },
        }));
    }

    @api
    get validity() {
        return this.template.querySelector('lightning-combobox').validity;
    }

    @api
    showHelpMessageIfInvalid() {
        this.template.querySelector('lightning-combobox').showHelpMessageIfInvalid();
    }

    @api
    focus() {
        this.template.querySelector('lightning-combobox').focus();
    }
}

The methods annotated with @api are all required here.

In the editTemplate html, we can pass in the type attributes like this:

<template>
    <c-combobox-datatype
        data-inputable="true"
        options={columnDef.typeAttributes.options}
        value={editedValue}
    >
    </c-combobox-datatype>
</template>

Here is the screen snapshot:

Pros and Cons

Pros

This implementation utilizes the same approach that standard lightning datatable uses internally to render inline editing for standard types. So the behavior is highly consistent.

Cons

This implementation relies on the internal behavior of lightning datatable and is subject to change.