Copy and Paste with complex objects

Tags: #<Tag:0x00007efc65702958>
#1

Hey,

I have complex objects lying behind each cell of my table. In order to display the values correctly I had to write a custom cell-renderer and a custom-editor. That works fine so far but I ran into problems when trying to copy and paste from/to handsontable.

To solve the copy-issue ([Object object]) I had to overwrite the toString() method of my objects. Paste was a little more complex, since plain values have to be converted into objects again. I did not find a solution to this without modifying handsontable-code, which i’d rather not touch.

My object looks like this:

{
  value: xxx,
  comment: yyy
}

I changed the following lines (starting at line 4801, Version: 1.4.0, baseVersion: 0.25.0) in handsontable.full.js

} else if (orgValue !== null && typeof orgValue === 'object') {
    value = {
        value: value,
        toString: function () { return this.value }
    };
    //pushData = false;
}

My question is:

  • Is there another solution to this issue
  • If not, would it be possible to provide a hook (so that I don’t need to modify handsontable-code)

Best regards
Tom

#2

Hi Tom,

That’s right - it’s not a good idea to change the source code as your solution may interfere with future releases.

Please share more information about which hook you would like to have?

#3

Hi Aleksandra,

I’d like to have a hook to be able to modify pasted-values before applying them to the grid. Personally I’d name it beforeSetObjectValueAtCell(val), but feel free to take another name :slight_smile:
Calling the hook would then look (in pseudo-code) something like this (again at line 4801):

} else if (orgValue !== null && typeof orgValue === 'object') {
    if (typeof(beforeSetObjectValueAtCell) !== 'undefined') {
        value = beforeSetObjectValueAtCell(value);
    } else {
        pushResult = false;
    }
}

It would be even better if i could set pushResult within the hook.

#4

It sounds like a good idea. I’ll mark this issue as a feature request.

#5

Thank you :wink:

#6