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Programmatically Hide Empty Columns
Programmatically Hide Empty Columns
Elisa Dinsmore avatar
Written by Elisa Dinsmore
Updated over 2 months ago

If you have a large number of columns in your schema that may not be used every import, hiding the additional columns is a good way to ensure your users don't have a cluttered view and can see the columns they need to be editing quickly.

They can hide all empty columns themselves with the options on the Review Table:

But you may want to hide these programmatically to save them a step. Below is a code example of a job that could be used to hide empty columns for your users. Please note this example is intended to be used with our Job Handler plugin.

/** 
* The CondenseField Job is a custom job with the following responsibility: *
* 1. For every field in the sheet, verify if it meets any of the following checks
* - Is the field required
* - Does the field have any validation errors
* - Does the field have any data
* 2. Any fields that do not meet any of the expected criteria are hidden */

//In your listener, add:
listener.on("job:completed", { job: "workbook:map" }, async (event) => {

const context = event.context
const jobId = context.jobId

const jobResponse = await api.jobs.get(jobId)
const sheetConfig = jobResponse.data.config
//@ts-ignore
const sheetId = sheetConfig.destinationSheetId

api.jobs.create({
type: "sheet",
operation: "condense-fields",
source: sheetId,
trigger: "immediate",
})
})

listener.use(jobHandler("sheet:condense-fields", async ({ context }, tick) => {
try {
const { data } = await api.sheets.get(context.sheetId)
const { data: counts } = await api.sheets.getRecordCounts(context.sheetId, { byField: true })

await tick(50, "Checking fields to hide...")

const fieldsToHide = data.config.fields.reduce((acc, field) => {
const isRequired = field?.constraints?.some((constraint) => constraint.type === "required") ?? false
const isInvalid = counts.counts.errorsByField?.[field.key] > 0
const hasData = counts.counts.byField?.[field.key]?.total !== counts.counts.byField?.[field.key]?.empty

// Fields which do not meet any criteria should be hidden
if (!isRequired && !isInvalid && !hasData) {
acc.push(field.key)
}
return acc
}, [])
return {
outcome: {
message: "All empty fields that are neither required nor invalids have been successfully hidden!",
acknowledge: true,
hideDefaultButton: true,
next: {
type: "view",
hiddenColumns: fieldsToHide,
sheetId: context.sheetId,
},
},
}
} catch (error) {
throw new Error(`Failed to condense sheet view: ${context.sheetId} | ${error}`)
}
})

This uses the hiddenColumns parameter that is available when using the job outcome to navigate the user to a specific view.

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