The Attribute Table Item¶

Main properties¶

The Main properties dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_ppt):

Attribute table Main properties Dialog

• For Source you can normally select only Layer features.
• With Layer you can choose from the vector layers loaded in the project.
• In case you activated the Generate an atlas option in the Atlas generation panel, there are two additional Source possible:
  • Current atlas feature (see figure_composer_table_atlas): you won’t see any option to choose the layer, and the table item will only show a row with the attributes from the current feature of the atlas coverage layer.
  • and Relation children (see figure_composer_table_relation): an option with the relation names will show up. This feature can only be used if you have defined a relation using your atlas coverage layer as parent, and the table will show the children rows of the atlas coverage layer’s current feature (for further information about the atlas generation, see Generate an Atlas).
• The button [Refresh table data] can be used to refresh the table when the actual contents of the table has changed.

Attribute table Main properties for ‘Current atlas feature’

Attribute table Main properties for ‘Relation children’

• The button [Attributes...] starts the Select attributes menu, see figure_composer_table_select, that can be used to change the visible contents of the table. After making changes use the [OK] button to apply changes to the table. The upper part of the window shows the list of the attributes to display and the lower part helps to set the way the data is sorted.

  

  Attribute table Select attributes Dialog

  In the Columns section you can:

  • Remove an attribute, just select an attribute row by clicking anywhere in the row and press the minus button to remove the selected attribute.
  • Add a new attribute use the plus button. At the end a new empty row appears and you can select empty cell of the column Attribute. You can select a field attribute from the list or you can select to build a new attribute using a regular expression ( button). Of course you can modify every already existing attribute by means of a regular expression.
  • Use the up and down arrows to change the order of the attributes in the table.
  • Select a cell in the Headings column and, to change the heading, just type in a new name.
  • set a precise Alignment (mixing vertical and horizontal alignment options) for each column.
  • Select a cell in the Width column and change it from Automatic to a width in mm, just type a number. When you want to change it back to Automatic, use the cross.
  • The [Reset] button can always be used to restore it to the original attribute settings.

  In the Sorting section you can:

  • Add an attribute to sort the table with. Select an attribute and set the sorting order to ‘Ascending’ or ‘Descending’ and press the plus button. A new line is added to the sort order list.
  • select a row in the list and use the up and down button to change the sort priority on attribute level. Selecting a cell in the Sort Order column helps you change the sorting order of the attribute field.
  • use the minus button to remove an attribute from the sort order list.

Feature filtering¶

The Feature filtering dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_filter):

Attribute table Feature filtering Dialog

You can:

• Define the Maximum rows to be displayed.

• Activate Remove duplicate rows from table to show unique records only.

• Activate Show only visible features within a map and select the corresponding Composer map to display the attributes of features only visible on selected map.

• Activate Show only features intersecting Atlas feature is only available when Generate an atlas is activated. When activated it will show a table with only the features which intersect the current atlas feature.

• Activate Filter with and provide a filter by typing in the input line or insert a regular expression using the given expression button. A few examples of filtering statements you can use when you have loaded the airports layer from the Sample dataset:

  • ELEV > 500
  • NAME = 'ANIAK'
  • NAME NOT LIKE 'AN%'
  • regexp_match( attribute( $currentfeature, 'USE' )  , '[i]')

  The last regular expression will include only the airports that have a letter ‘i’ in the attribute field ‘USE’.

Appearance¶

The Appearance dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_appearance):

Attribute table appearance Dialog

• Click Show empty rows to fill the attribute table with empty cells. This option can also be used to provide additional empty cells when you have a result to show!
• With Cell margins you can define the margin around text in each cell of the table.
• With Display header you can select from a list one of ‘On first frame’, ‘On all frames’ default option, or ‘No header’.
• The option Empty table controls what will be displayed when the result selection is empty.
  • Draw headers only, will only draw the header except if you have chosen ‘No header’ for Display header.
  • Hide entire table, will only draw the background of the table. You can activate Don’t draw background if frame is empty in Frames to completely hide the table.
  • Show set message, will draw the header and adds a cell spanning all columns and display a message like ‘No result’ that can be provided in the option Message to display
• The option Message to display is only activated when you have selected Show set message for Empty table. The message provided will be shown in the table in the first row, when the result is an empty table.
• With Background color you can set the background color of the table. The Advanced customization option helps you define different background colors for each cell (see figure_composer_table_background)

Attribute table Advanced Background Dialog

• With the Wrap text on option, you can define a character on which the cell content will be wraped each time it is met
• With Oversized text you define the behaviour when the width set for a column is smaller than its content’s length. It can be Wrap text or Truncate text.

Show grid¶

The Show grid dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_grid):

Attribute table Show grid Dialog

• Activate Show grid when you want to display the grid, the outlines of the table cells.
• With Line width you can set the thickness of the lines used in the grid.
• The Color of the grid can be set using the color selection dialog.

Fonts and text styling¶

The Fonts and text styling dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_fonts):

Attribute table Fonts and text styling Dialog

• You can define Font and Color for Table heading and Table contents.
• For Table heading you can additionally set the Alignment to Follow column alignment or override this setting by choosing Left, Center or Right. The column alignment is set using the Select Attributes dialog (see Figure_composer_table_select ).

Frames¶

The Frames dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_frames):

Attribute table Frames Dialog

• With Resize mode you can select how to render the attribute table contents:
  • Use existing frames displays the result in the first frame and added frames only.
  • Extend to next page will create as many frames (and corresponding pages) as necessary to display the full selection of attribute table. Each frame can be moved around on the layout. If you resize a frame, the resulting table will be divided up between the other frames. The last frame will be trimmed to fit the table.
  • Repeat until finished will also create as many frames as the Extend to next page option, except all frames will have the same size.
• Use the [Add Frame] button to add another frame with the same size as selected frame. The result of the table that will not fit in the first frame will continue in the next frame when you use the Resize mode Use existing frames.
• Activate Don’t export page if frame is empty prevents the page to be exported when the table frame has no contents. This means all other composer items, maps, scalebars, legends etc. will not be visible in the result.
• Activate Don’t draw background if frame is empty prevents the background to be drawn when the table frame has no contents.