It is a common requirement for any project to display data in some kind of tabular format. The easiest way to achieve this is by using HTML table. But soon this gets complex as you need a way to support pagination (client-side and server-side), sorting (single & multi column), resizable columns, inline editing, filtering, etc.

1. Part 1: ng-grid and a Simple REST API
It is a common requirement for any project to display data in
some kind of tabular format. The easiest way to achieve this is
by using HTML table. But soon this gets complex as you need a
way to support pagination (client-side and server-side), sorting
(single & multi column), resizable columns, inline editing,
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Options
• HTML Table
• JQuery Grid Plugins (jqGrid, FlexGrid etc.)
• Angular’s native implementation of Grid
• ng-grid
• ng-table
First Grid Solution
7KHˉUVWVROXWLRQZHDUHJRLQJWRORRNDWLVng-grid which is built for AngularJS
and is the most popular Grid solution out there for Angular.
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2. Where to Start
In this Blog post we will build a grid solution using Angular and ng-grid,
which hooks in to the RESTful end point running locally using NodeJS
ExpressJS. We will use basic features of Node Express. Before jumping
in, you may want to see the working code on Plunker: http://embed.plnkr.
co/865hnS/preview.
Assumptions
1. You already know AngularJS
2. Know the basics of Grunt, Bower and Bootstrap
3. Have basic knowledge about REST
4. You already have node, npm, git and bower installed on your development
machine
Project Structure
We will use the following Angular seed project:
https://github.com/libertyleap/angular-grunt-seed
This is the seed project which comes with a default bower and grunt build for
lint, karma, watch, livereload, express server, etc.
Steps to setup run Seed Project:
1. Clone the project:
git clone https://github.com/libertyleap/angular-grunt-seed.git
2. Rename the project from angular-grunt-seed to ng-grid-demo
mv angular-grunt-seed ng-grid-demo
3. Change the current directory to ng-grid-demo
cd ng-grid-demo
4. Execute npm install so that all the Grunt dependencies are downloaded
and it also runs bower install
npm install
5. Execute grunt, this will start the local Node server on port 9000.
grunt
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3. 6. Open your favorite browser and go to: http://localhost:9000/
Adding NG-Grid into Seed Project Using Bower
The easiest way to add ng-grid to seed project is using Bower and we will
cover this approach in this blog. If you are not comfortable doing this, you can
do it manually i.e. go to ng-grid repo: http://angular-ui.github.io/ng-grid/ and
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bower install ng-grid –save-dev
Above command updates the ng-grid-demobower.jsonˉOHWRDGGng-grid as
dependency.
Bower will download ng-grid locally. You can verify this by going in to the
“bower-components” folder. You will see a new folder ng-grid inside the
bower-components folder.
Hooking-up NG-Grid with View Restful Service
To utilize ng-grid in our seed project we need to reference two ng-grid
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WKHPLQJRIWKHJULG7KHˉUVWVWHSZLOOEHWRJRLQWRRXUindex.htmlˉOH
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4. Open the ng-grid-demo/src/index.htmlˉOHDQGDGGWKHIROORZLQJHQWULHV
1. In the head add this css dependency (bower-components/ng-grid/ng-grid.
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css).
2. In the body section add ng-grid’s js dependency (bower-components/
ng-grid/ng-grid-2.0.12.debug.js).
3. We need to add the ‘ngGrid’ Angular module dependency to app.js so that
we can start using ng-grid’s directives and other services.
NG-Grid Basic Example
We will look at the steps required to add the basic ng-grid example in this
section. We will explore ng-grid’s advanced features in coming sections.
To be able to demonstrate grid features we need some kind of REST endpoint.
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serve list of open source contributors.
REST JSON:
Create a folder json XQGHU QJJULGGHPR?VUF IROGHU UHDWH D QHZ MVRQ ˉOH
FDOOHGFRQWULEXWRUVMVRQ7KLV-621ˉOHZLOOKDYHWKHIROORZLQJFRQWHQWZKLFK
will be served to UI ng-grid.

5. ng-grid-demosrcjsoncontributor.json
KDQJHWKH*UXQWEXLOGWRLQFOXGHWKLVMVRQˉOHLQ .build directory.
Angular Factory:
Let’s create a service (gridService.js) that will return above JSON using REST’s
GET method. This data will be returned asynchronously and we will use
Promises ($q) for this. Here is the Service code.
We will have one method called getContributors which will use Angular’s
$http (https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$http) to get the data from
MVRQFRQWULEXWRUVMVRQˉOH,WDOVRXVHV$QJXODUȠVSURPLVHLPSOHPHQWDWLRQT
(https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$q).
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6. This is what is happening here:
• When controller calls this factory method “getContributors” it will get a
promise object back i.e. deferred.promise.
• When response comes back from the asynchronous $http call we will
resolve deferred object to return list of contributors.
• If there is an error in $http then we will reject the deferred object with
the reason so that caller can handle it appropriately i.e. show some kind
of message back to user.
Controller:
We will add “GridService” as a dependency to “HomeController” and call
“getContributors” method from GridService. Response is set as “myData” which
will be used to populate ng-grid data in view.
The above step $scope.gridOptions is the main setup which hooks-up ng-grid
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View:
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div, and adding a ng-grid directive to it with the parameter being the function
in the controller that we will create soon. We are also going to add a simple
class onto the div for easy styling. Change “templateshome.html” to include
the following code:
Here “gridOptions” is $scope object populated in controller.
This should get the basic ng-grid up and running.
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7. NG-Grid Features
,QWKLVVHFWLRQZHZLOOH[SORUHGLIIHUHQWFRQˉJXUDWLRQRSWLRQVIRUQJJULG:H
just need to change $scope.gridOptions in Controller to be able to support
the following features.
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It is a common requirement for any Grid to name column names different
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“First Name”.
Cell Template Example:
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From the above example we want to apply Green color to id column with id
1.
In-line Cell Editing Example:
We will explore an option to be able to edit the Grid cell and save it to the
REST service. We will demonstrate code to be able to update the “company”
cell of the contributor in Grid.
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8. homeController.js
We need to set enableCellEditSURSHUWWR758(IRUWKHFROXPQGHˉQLWLRQ
After setting this if you restart the node server you will see company column
is editable after double clicking the cell.
The next step is we want to send this updated cell info to REST backend. For
this we will use one of ng-grid’s Event (ngGridEventEndCellEdit), which will
broadcast after cell is edited. You can see all the available ng-grid’s Events
here: https://github.com/angular-ui/ng-grid/wiki/Grid-Events
We will update the controller to have the following code
As you can see from the above code we want to send the updated row
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saveContributor in our gridService.js.
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gridService.js

9. We do not have a real REST service and it is impossible to demo this as we
need some kind of persistent store. You can open your browser’s developer
tools and validate above $http post method is called with the right data.
You can see completed code for this blog here: https://github.com/backand/
ng-grid-rest-simple-demo. And stay tuned for Part 2 of this series when we
cover ng-grid and a real REST API.
References
Blog Code: https://github.com/backand/ng-grid-rest-simple-demo
Plunker: http://embed.plnkr.co/865hnS/preview
ng-grid documentation: http://angular-ui.github.io/ng-grid/
ng-grid code: https://github.com/angular-ui/ng-grid
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Contact Information
Backand Inc.
info@backand.com
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