Introduction
Welcome to the documentation for react-bootstrap-data-grid!
react-bootstrap-data-grid is a project that provides grid and table UI components that work specifically with apps built with React and choosing to use Bootstrap as the design system.
It is designed to make use of Bootstrap design tokens have the same look and feel as the rest of a site styled with Bootstrap.
To get started, follow the installation instructions to install react-bootstrap-data-grid into your project. Once installed, go to the basic usage add your first tablle or grid into your project. From there, look through the documentation to explore additional features.
What is a Data Grid?
Web applications often involve displaying data in a tabular format and allowing the user to manipulate perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on the data.
It is also common to allow the user to sort, filter, and paginate data displayed this way.
These kinds of features take a significant time to implement from scratch. A data grid is a UI component that partially or fully implements many of these features in order to speed up development web applications.
Over time, popular data grid components have come to adopt particularly advanced features. For example:
- Row virtualization
- Unmounting rows that are out of view to conserve memory
- Row and column reordering
- Allowing the user to drag an drop rows and columns to change the displayed order
- Column resizing
- Allowing the user to change the width of a column by dragging a border
- Lazy loading
- Deferring loading of data from a server until the user scrolls that data into view
Comparison with Other Solutions
react-bootstrap-table2
react-bootstrap-table2 was previously popular table component for Bootstrap. It is one of the projects by which react-bootstrap-data-grid was inspired.
Unfortunately, the project has not seen a release since 2018 and only supports React 7 and Bootstrap 4.
react-bootstrap-data-grid aims to fill the niche that react-bootstrap-table2 left behind.
MUI-X Data Grid
MUI-X Data Grid is the official data grid component for the Material UI design system. It is the other project by which react-bootstrap-data-grid was inspired.
react-bootstrap-data-grid aims to fill the same role as MUI-X Data Grid, but for Bootstrap rather than the Material UI design system.
Tanstack Table
Tanstack Table is a popular headless data grid solution. Being a headless solution, it provides functionality for manipulating data internally. The headless nature allows it integrates with any design system but leaves the developer to implement the actual UI.
In contrast, react-bootstrap-data-grid is for developers who have decided on using specifically Bootstrap and React for their web app and wishes to avoid the effort of implementing the UI portions of the data grid component.
AG Grid
AG Grid is perhaps the most popular data grid solution on the market. However, it has its own design system.
Customizing AG Grid to make use of Bootstrap design tokens to achieve some degree of the same look and feel as Bootstrap components is likely possible, but may be a significant effort.
react-bootstrap-data-grid is for those who want a data grid solution that looks aesthetically as similar as possible to the rest of a site styled with Bootstrap and without going through such a customization effort.
Editions
There are two editions of react-bootstrap-data-grid, Community and Pro. The Community edition is released under the MIT license and is freely usable and distributable.
The Pro edition contains advanced features not available in the Community edition and requires a commercial license to use in production. There is no license available for purchase yet, but it is expected to be made available in the near future.
The getting started instructions in this article apply to the Community edition. For information on to install and set up the Pro edition, see the relevant article. Throughout this documentation site, articles with content that only pertain to the Pro edition will be marked with the following badge: Pro.
Further information
- See the source code in the project's GitHub repo.
- The project is under active development. See the development roadmap.
- See the page for the published NPM package in case you are curious about download statistics.
- If you have a question, concern, or suggestion, feel free to create a GitHub issue on the repo's issue page.
- If you see anything wrong with this documentation site, want to make a change it, or are just curious, see this documentation site's GitHub repo.
Live Demo
The following is a live demo of the grid component that is a part of react-bootstrap-data-grid.