Tutorial

This is a step-by-step guide to learn how to install and use django-tables2 using Django 1.11.

  1. pip install django-tables2
  2. Start a new Django app using python manage.py startapp tutorial
  3. Add both 'django_tables2' and 'tutorial' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting in settings.py.

Now, add a model to your tutorial/models.py:

# tutorial/models.py
class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100, verbose_name='full name')

Create the database tables for the newly added model:

$ python manage.py makemigrations tutorial
$ python manage.py migrate tutorial

Add some data so you have something to display in the table:

$ python manage.py shell
>>> from tutorial.models import Person
>>> Person.objects.bulk_create([Person(name='Jieter'), Person(name='Bradley')])
[<Person: Person object>, <Person: Person object>]

Now write a view to pass a Person QuerySet into a template:

# tutorial/views.py
from django.shortcuts import render
from .models import Person

def people(request):
    return render(request, 'tutorial/people.html', {'people': Person.objects.all()})

Add the view to your urls.py:

# urls.py
from django.conf.urls import url
from django.contrib import admin

from tutorial.views import people

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
    url(r'^people/', people)
]

Finally, create the template:

{# tutorial/templates/tutorial/people.html #}
{% load render_table from django_tables2 %}
<!doctype html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>List of persons</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        {% render_table people %}
    </body>
</html>

You should be able to load the page in the browser (http://localhost:8000/people/ by default), you should see:

An example table rendered using django-tables2

While simple, passing a QuerySet directly to {% render_table %} does not allow for any customization. For that, you must define a custom Table class:

# tutorial/tables.py
import django_tables2 as tables
from .models import Person

class PersonTable(tables.Table):
    class Meta:
        model = Person
        template_name = 'django_tables2/bootstrap.html'

You will then need to instantiate and configure the table in the view, before adding it to the context:

# tutorial/views.py
from django.shortcuts import render
from django_tables2 import RequestConfig
from .models import Person
from .tables import PersonTable

def people(request):
    table = PersonTable(Person.objects.all())
    RequestConfig(request).configure(table)
    return render(request, 'tutorial/people.html', {'table': table})

Using RequestConfig automatically pulls values from request.GET and updates the table accordingly. This enables data ordering and pagination.

Rather than passing a QuerySet to {% render_table %}, instead pass the table instance:

{# tutorial/templates/tutorial/people.html #}
{% load render_table from django_tables2 %}
<!doctype html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>List of persons</title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/css/bootstrap.min.css" />
    </head>
    <body>
        {% render_table table %}
    </body>
</html>

This results in a table rendered with the bootstrap3 style sheet:

An example table rendered using django-tables2 with the bootstrap template

At this point you have not actually customized anything but the template. There are several topic you can read into to further customize the table:

If you think you don’t have a lot customization to do and don’t want to make a full class declaration use django_tables2.tables.table_factory.