JavaScript Data GridQuick Filter

Quick Filter is a piece of text given to the grid (typically the user will type it in somewhere in your application) that is used to filter rows by comparing against the data in all columns. This can be used in addition to column-specific filtering.

Setting the Quick Filter

You can set the Quick Filter text by calling the setGridOption('quickFilterText', text) method on the grid API.

api.setGridOption('quickFilterText', 'new filter text');

You can also set the initial Quick Filter text via the quickFilterText grid option.

The provided Quick Filter text will be split into words, and each word will be compared against the row. A word matches the row if the string value of any of the columns contains the word (the check is case insensitive). All words must match the row for it to be included. For example, if the text is "Tony Ireland", the Quick Filter will only include rows with both "Tony" AND "Ireland" in them.

Checking the Quick Filter

Usually the state of the Quick Filter text would be maintained outside of the grid. However, it's possible to check whether the Quick Filter is applied via the API method isQuickFilterPresent(), and get the current text via getQuickFilter().

Overriding the Quick Filter Value

If your data contains complex objects, the Quick Filter will end up comparing against [object Object] instead of searchable string values. In this case you will need to implement getQuickFilterText to extract a searchable string from your complex object.

Alternatively, you might want to format string values specifically for searching (e.g. replace accented characters in strings, or remove commas from numbers).

Finally, if you want a column to be ignored by the Quick Filter, have getQuickFilterText return an empty string ''.

const gridOptions = {
    columnDefs: [
        {
            field: 'country',
            getQuickFilterText: params => {
                return params.value.name;
            }
        }
    ],

    // other grid options ...
}

Quick Filter Cache

By default, the Quick Filter checks each column's value, including running value getters if present, every time the Quick Filter is executed. If your data set is large, you may wish to enable the Quick Filter cache by setting cacheQuickFilter = true.

When the cache is enabled, a 'Quick Filter text' is generated for each node by concatenating all the values for each column. For example, a table with columns of "Employee Name" and "Job" could have a row with Quick Filter text of 'NIALL CROSBY\nCOFFEE MAKER'. The grid then performs a simple string search, so if you search for 'Niall', it will find our example text. Joining all the column values into one string gives a performance boost. The values are joined after the Quick Filter is requested for the first time and stored in the rowNode - the original data that you provide is not changed.

Reset Cache Text

When in use, the Quick Filter cache text can be manually reset in one of the following ways:

• Each Row Node has a resetQuickFilterAggregateText() method on it, which can be called to reset the cache text.
• api.resetQuickFilter() will reset the cache text on every Row Node.

Updating Data, Cell Editing, Excluding/Including Hidden Columns from the Quick Filter, and Updating Column Definitions will automatically reset the cache text on any affected Row Nodes.

Include Hidden Columns

By default the Quick Filter will only check visible column values. If you want to check hidden column values, then you can set the grid option includeHiddenColumnsInQuickFilter = true. Note that if you have a large number of hidden columns then this can have a performance impact.

This can also be set via the API method setGridOption('includeHiddenColumnsInQuickFilter', toInclude).

Quick Filter Parser

By default the Quick Filter splits the text into a list of words which are then compared against each row. You may want to override this behaviour, for example to allow using quotes to search for exact string values. This is possible by providing a quickFilterParser. Note that the value passed to the parser will have already been converted to upper case.

const gridOptions = {
    // split words by comma instead of space
    quickFilterParser: (quickFilter) => quickFilter.split(','),

    // other grid options ...
}

Quick Filter Matcher

The default behaviour of the Quick Filter is to check whether every search term in the parsed Quick Filter text appears in the Quick Filter Value for any column. The matching logic can be overridden by providing a quickFilterMatcher, e.g. to perform searches via regular expressions.

The rowQuickFilterAggregateText parameter passed to the matcher function is a concatenation of all the Quick Filter Values (using the Quick Filter Cache if enabled). Note that this value will be upper case.

const gridOptions = {
    // perform a regular expression search
    quickFilterMatcher: (quickFilterParts, rowQuickFilterAggregateText) => {
        return quickFilterParts.every(part => rowQuickFilterAggregateText.match(part));
    },

    // other grid options ...
}

Example: Quick Filter Configuration

The example below shows the Quick Filter working on different data types. Each column demonstrates something different as follows:

• Name - Simple column, nothing complex.
• Age - Complex object with 'dot' in field, Quick Filter works fine.
• Country - Complex object and value getter used, again Quick Filter works fine.
• Results - Complex object, Quick Filter would call toString on the complex object, so getQuickFilterText is provided.
• Hidden - A hidden column with all values being the string 'hidden'. Enter hidden into the filter and no rows will be matched. Click the Include Hidden Columns button to set includeHiddenColumnsInQuickFilter = true, and all rows will be matched. Note the Quick Filter cache will be cleared automatically when the option is changed.

A quickFilterParser is defined to allow exact searches using quotes, e.g. "gold: 1" will only match Results with that value. A quickFilterMatcher is also defined to allow regular expressions to be entered, e.g. 2[012] will match Age 20, 21 and 22.

The example also demonstrates having the Quick Filter cache turned on. The grid works very fast even when the cache is turned off, so you probably don't need it for small data sets. For large data sets (e.g. over 10,000 rows), turning the cache on will improve Quick Filter speed. Tweaking the cacheQuickFilter option in the example allows both modes to be experimented with:

• Cache Quick Filter (example default): The cache is used. Value getters are executed the first time the Quick Filter is run. Hitting 'Print Quick Filter Cache Texts' will return back the Quick Filter text for each row which will initially be undefined and then return the Quick Filter text after the Quick Filter is executed for the first time.
• Normal Quick Filter: The cache is not used. Value getters are executed on every node each time the filter is executed. Hitting 'Print Quick Filter Cache Texts' will always return undefined for every row because the cache is not used.

Pivoting / Filtering Aggregated Values

When Pivoting or Filtering Aggregated Values are enabled, Quick Filter is applied by default to the data after pivoting/aggregating has been performed. This means that filtering will not change the aggregated values, and only columns that are being used for pivoting can be used for filtering.

It is possible to instead filter the data before pivoting/aggregating are applied. This can be done by setting the grid option applyQuickFilterBeforePivotOrAgg = true.

The following example demonstrates the difference in filtering behaviour with applyQuickFilterBeforePivotOrAgg enabled/disabled. The columns Athlete and Sport are present, but are not being used for pivoting:

• Search for “Swimming” or 2000 and note that there are no matches in the grid, as the filter is applied after pivoting.
• Click the button to apply Quick Filter before pivoting and aggregation and note that there are matches in the grid, as the filter is applied before pivoting.

Server Side Data

Quick Filters only make sense with client-side data (i.e. when using the Client-Side Row Model). For the other row models you would need to implement your own server-side filtering to replicate Quick Filter functionality.

API Reference

Grid Options

Column Properties

Grid API Methods