Angular Data GridEdit Components

A Cell Editor Component is the UI that appears, normally inside the Cell, that takes care of the Edit operation. You can select from the Provided Cell Editors or create your own Custom Cell Editor Components.

The example below shows some Provided Editor Components and some Custom Editor Components.

Custom Components

interface ICellEditorAngularComp {
  // Mandatory - Params for rendering this component. 
  agInit(params: ICellEditorParams): void;

  // Return the final value - called by the grid once after editing is complete
  getValue(): TValue  |  null  |  undefined;

  // Optional: Gets called with the latest cell editor params every time they update
  refresh?(params: ICellEditorParams<any, TValue>): void;

  // Optional: A hook to perform any necessary operation just after the GUI for this component has been rendered on the screen.
  // This method is called each time the edit component is activated.
  // This is useful for any logic that requires attachment before executing, such as putting focus on a particular DOM element.
  afterGuiAttached?(): void;

  // Optional: Gets called once after initialised. If you return true, the editor will
  // appear in a popup, so is not constrained to the boundaries of the cell.
  // This is great if you want to, for example, provide you own custom dropdown list
  // for selection. Default is false (ie if you don't provide the method).
  isPopup?(): boolean;

  // Optional: Gets called once, only if isPopup() returns true. Return "over" if the popup
  // should cover the cell, or "under" if it should be positioned below leaving the
  // cell value visible. If this method is not present, the default is "over".
  getPopupPosition?(): 'over'  |  'under'  |  undefined;

  // Optional: Gets called once after initialised. If you return true, the editor will not be
  // used and the grid will continue editing. Use this to make a decision on editing
  // inside the init() function, eg maybe you want to only start editing if the user
  // hits a numeric key, but not a letter, if the editor is for numbers.
  isCancelBeforeStart?(): boolean;

  // Optional: Gets called once after editing is complete. If your return true, then the new
  // value will not be used. The editing will have no impact on the record. Use this
  // if you do not want a new value from your gui, i.e. you want to cancel the editing.
  isCancelAfterEnd?(): boolean;

  // Optional: If doing full line edit, then gets called when focus should be put into the editor
  focusIn?(): void;

  // Optional: If doing full line edit, then gets called when focus is leaving the editor
  focusOut?(): void;

}

Selecting Components

Cell Editor Components are configured using the cellEditor property of the Column Definition.

<ag-grid-angular
    [columnDefs]="columnDefs"
    /* other grid options ... */ />

this.columnDefs = [
    { 
        field: 'name', 
        editable: true, 
        // uses a provided editor, referenced by name
        cellEditor: 'agTextCellEditor' 
    },
    { 
        field: 'name', 
        editable: true, 
        // uses a custom editor, referenced directly
        cellEditor: 'CustomEditorComp'
    },
];

See Registering Custom Components for details on how to register your custom grid components.

Dynamic Selection

The colDef.cellEditorSelector function allows setting different Editor Components for different Rows within a Column.

The params passed to cellEditorSelector are the same as those passed to the Editor Component. Typically the selector will use this to check the row's contents and choose an editor accordingly.

The result is an object with component and params to use instead of cellEditor and cellEditorParams.

This following shows the Selector always returning back the provided Rich Select Editor:

cellEditorSelector: params => {
    return {
        component: 'agRichSelectCellEditor',
        params: { values: ['Male', 'Female'] }
    };
}

However a selector only makes sense when a selection is made. The following demonstrates selecting between Cell Editors:

cellEditorSelector: params => {

  if (params.data.type === 'age') {
    return {
      component: NumericCellEditor,
    }
  }

  if (params.data.type === 'gender') {
    return {
      component: 'agRichSelectCellEditor',
      params: {
        values: ['Male', 'Female']
      }
    }
  }

  if (params.data.type === 'mood') {
    return {
      component: MoodEditor,
      popup: true,
      popupPosition: 'under'
    }
  }

  return undefined
}

Here is a full example:

• The column 'Value' holds data of different types as shown in the column 'Type' (numbers/genders/moods).
• colDef.cellEditorSelector is a function that returns the name of the component to use to edit based on the type of data for that row
• Edit a cell by double clicking to observe the different editors used.

Dynamic Props

The colDef.cellEditorParams function allows dynamic props independently of the Editor selection. For example you might have a 'City' column that has values based on the 'Country' column.

cellEditorParams: params => {
    const selectedCountry = params.data.country;

    if (selectedCountry === 'Ireland') {
        return {
            values: ['Dublin', 'Cork', 'Galway']
        };
    } else {
        return {
            values: ['New York', 'Los Angeles', 'Chicago', 'Houston']
        };
    }
}

Below shows an example with dynamic props. The following can be noted:

• Column Gender uses a Cell Component for both the grid and the editor.
• Column Country allows country selection, with cellHeight being used to make each entry 50px tall. If the currently selected city for the row doesn't match a newly selected country, the city cell is cleared.
• Column City uses dynamic parameters to display values for the selected country, and uses formatValue to add the selected city's country as a suffix.
• Column Address uses the large text area editor.

Custom Props

The property colDef.cellEditorParams allows custom props to be passed to editors.

colDef = {
    cellEditor: MyCellEditor,    
    cellEditorParams: {
        // make "country" value available to cell editor
        country: 'Ireland'
    },
    // ...other props
}

Popup Editor

An editor can be Inline or Popup.

An Inline Editor Component will be placed inside the Grid's Cell, replacing the Cell contents when active.

A Popup Editor Component appears in a popup over the Cell. Popup Editors are not constrained to the Cells dimensions.

Configure that a Custom Cell Editor is in a popup in one of the following ways:

1. Specify cellEditorPopup=true on the Column Definition.
2. Implement the isPopup() method on the Custom Cell Editor and return true.

colDefs = [
  {
    cellEditor: MyPopupEditor,
    cellEditorPopup: true
    // ...
  }
]

Popup Editors appear over the editing Cell. Configure the Popup Editor to appear below the Cell in one of the following ways:

1. Implement the getPopupPosition() method on the Custom Cell Editor and return under.
2. Specify cellEditorPopupPosition='under' on the Column Definition.

colDef = {
  cellEditorPopup: true,
  cellEditorPopupPosition: 'under',
  // ...other props
}

Keyboard Navigation

In Custom Editors, you may wish to disable some of the Grids keyboard navigation. For example, if you are providing a simple text editor, you may wish the grid to do nothing when you press the right and left arrows (the default is the grid will move to the next / previous cell) as you may want the right and left arrows to move the cursor inside your editor. In other cell editors, you may wish the grid to behave as normal.

Because different cell editors will have different requirements on what the grid does, it is up to the cell editor to decide which event it wants the grid to handle and which it does not.

You have two options to stop the grid from doing it's default action on certain key events:

1. Stop propagation of the event to the grid in the cell editor.
2. Tell the grid to do nothing via the colDef.suppressKeyEvent() callback.

Option 1 - Stop Propagation

If you don't want the grid to act on an event, call event.stopPropagation(). The advantage of this method is that your cell editor takes care of everything, this is good for creating reusable cell editors.

The following code snippet is one you could include for a simple text editor, which would stop the grid from doing navigation.

const KEY_LEFT = 'ArrowLeft';
const KEY_UP = 'ArrowUp';
const KEY_RIGHT = 'ArrowRight';
const KEY_DOWN = 'ArrowDown';
const KEY_PAGE_UP = 'PageUp';
const KEY_PAGE_DOWN = 'PageDown';
const KEY_PAGE_HOME = 'Home';
const KEY_PAGE_END = 'End';

@Component({
    selector: 'my-editor',
    template: `<input (keydown)="onKeyDown($event)" ...rest of input/>`
})
export class MyCellEditor implements ICellEditorAngularComp {
    /* Component Editor Lifecycle method */
    agInit(params: ICellEditorParams) {
        this.params = params;
    }

    onKeyDown(event) {
        const key = event.key;

        const isNavigationKey = key === KEY_LEFT ||
            key === KEY_RIGHT ||
            key === KEY_UP ||
            key === KEY_DOWN ||
            key === KEY_PAGE_DOWN ||
            key === KEY_PAGE_UP ||
            key === KEY_PAGE_HOME ||
            key === KEY_PAGE_END;

            if (isNavigationKey) {
                // this stops the grid from receiving the event and executing keyboard navigation
                event.stopPropagation();
            }
    }

    ..rest of the component
})

Option 2 - Suppress Keyboard Event

If you implement colDef.suppressKeyboardEvent(), you can tell the grid which events you want to process and which not. The advantage of this method of the previous method is it takes the responsibility out of the cell editor and into the column definition. So if you are using a reusable, or third party, cell editor, and the editor doesn't have this logic in it, you can add the logic via configuration.

const KEY_UP = 'ArrowUp';
const KEY_DOWN = 'ArrowDown';

@Component({
    selector: 'my-grid',
    template: `
        <ag-grid-angular
            [columnDefs]="columnDefs"
            ...rest of the component... />
    `
})
export class AppComponent {
    columnDefs = [
        {
            headerName: "Value Column",
            field: "value",
            suppressKeyboardEvent: params => {
                console.log('cell is editing: ' + params.editing);
                console.log('keyboard event:', params.event);
            
                // return true (to suppress) if editing and user hit up/down keys
                const key = params.event.key;
                const gridShouldDoNothing = params.editing && (key === KEY_UP || key === KEY_DOWN);
                return gridShouldDoNothing;
            }
        }
    ]

    ...rest of the component...
}

Accessing Instances

After the grid has created an instance of an Editor Component for a Cell it is possible to access that instance. This is useful if you want to call a method that you provide on the Editor that has nothing to do with the operation of the grid. Accessing Editors is done using the grid API getCellEditorInstances(params).

If you are doing normal editing, then only one cell is editable at any given time. For this reason if you call getCellEditorInstances() with no params, it will return back the editing cell's editor if a cell is editing, or an empty list if no cell is editing.

An example of calling getCellEditorInstances() is as follows:

const instances = api.getCellEditorInstances(params);
if (instances.length > 0) {
    const instance = instances[0];
}

The example below shows using getCellEditorInstances. The following can be noted:

• All cells are editable.
• First Name and Last Name use the default editor.
• All other columns use the provided MySimpleCellEditor editor.
• The example sets an interval to print information from the active cell editor. There are three results: 1) No editing 2) Editing with default cell renderer and 3) editing with the custom cell editor. All results are printed to the developer console.