Glossary

accessor

Refers to an Accessor object

column name

The name given to a column. In the follow example, the column name is age.

class SimpleTable(tables.Table):
    age = tables.Column()
empty value

An empty value is synonymous with “no value”. Columns have an empty_values attribute that contains values that are considered empty. It’s a way to declare which values from the database correspond to null/blank/missing etc.

order by alias

A prefixed column name that describes how a column should impact the order of data within the table. This allows the implementation of how a column affects ordering to be abstracted, which is useful (e.g. in query strings).

class ExampleTable(tables.Table):
    name = tables.Column(order_by=("first_name", "last_name"))

In this example -name and name are valid order by aliases. In a query string you might then have ?order=-name.

table

The traditional concept of a table. i.e. a grid of rows and columns containing data.

view

A Django view.

record

A single Python object used as the data for a single row.

render

The act of serializing a Table into HTML.

template

A Django template.

table data

An iterable of records that Table uses to populate its rows.