Table State (Solid) Guide

TanStack Table has a simple underlying internal state management system to store and manage the state of the table. It also lets you selectively pull out any state that you need to manage in your own state management. This guide will walk you through the different ways in which you can interact with and manage the state of the table.

You do not need to set up anything special in order for the table state to work. If you pass nothing into either state, initialState, or any of the on[State]Change table options, the table will manage its own state internally. You can access any part of this internal state by using the table.getState() table instance API.

const table = createSolidTable({
  columns,
  get data() {
    return data()
  },
  //...
})

console.log(table.getState()) //access the entire internal state
console.log(table.getState().rowSelection) //access just the row selection state

If all you need to do for certain states is customize their initial default values, you still do not need to manage any of the state yourself. You can simply set values in the initialState option of the table instance.

const table = createSolidTable({
  columns,
  data,
  initialState: {
    columnOrder: ['age', 'firstName', 'lastName'], //customize the initial column order
    columnVisibility: {
      id: false //hide the id column by default
    },
    expanded: true, //expand all rows by default
    sorting: [
      {
        id: 'age',
        desc: true //sort by age in descending order by default
      }
    ]
  },
  //...
})

Note: Only specify each particular state in either initialState or state, but not both. If you pass in a particular state value to both initialState and state, the initialized state in state will take overwrite any corresponding value in initialState.

If you need easy access to the table state in other areas of your application, TanStack Table makes it easy to control and manage any or all of the table state in your own state management system. You can do this by passing in your own state and state management functions to the state and on[State]Change table options.

You can control just the state that you need easy access to. You do NOT have to control all of the table state if you do not need to. It is recommended to only control the state that you need on a case-by-case basis.

In order to control a particular state, you need to both pass in the corresponding state value and the on[State]Change function to the table instance.

Let's take filtering, sorting, and pagination as an example in a "manual" server-side data fetching scenario. You can store the filtering, sorting, and pagination state in your own state management, but leave out any other state like column order, column visibility, etc. if your API does not care about those values.

const [columnFilters, setColumnFilters] = createSignal([]) //no default filters
const [sorting, setSorting] = createSignal([{
  id: 'age',
  desc: true, //sort by age in descending order by default
}]) 
const [pagination, setPagination] = createSignal({ pageIndex: 0, pageSize: 15 })

//Use our controlled state values to fetch data
const tableQuery = createQuery({
  queryKey: ['users', columnFilters, sorting, pagination],
  queryFn: () => fetchUsers(columnFilters, sorting, pagination),
  //...
})

const table = createSolidTable({
  columns,
  get data() {
    return tableQuery.data()
  },
  //...
  state: {
    get columnFilters() {
      return columnFilters() //pass controlled state back to the table (overrides internal state)
    },
    get sorting() {
      return sorting()
    },
    get pagination() {
      return pagination()
    },
  },
  onColumnFiltersChange: setColumnFilters, //hoist columnFilters state into our own state management
  onSortingChange: setSorting,
  onPaginationChange: setPagination,
})
//...

Alternatively, you can control the entire table state with the onStateChange table option. It will hoist out the entire table state into your own state management system. Be careful with this approach, as you might find that raising some frequently changing state values up a solid tree, like columnSizingInfo state`, might cause bad performance issues.

A couple of more tricks may be needed to make this work. If you use the onStateChange table option, the initial values of the state must be populated with all of the relevant state values for all of the features that you want to use. You can either manually type out all of the initial state values, or use the table.setOptions API in a special way as shown below.

//create a table instance with default state values
const table = createSolidTable({
  columns,
  get data() {
    return data()
  },
  //... Note: `state` values are NOT passed in yet
})


const [state, setState] = createSignal({
  ...table.initialState, //populate the initial state with all of the default state values from the table instance
  pagination: {
    pageIndex: 0,
    pageSize: 15 //optionally customize the initial pagination state.
  }
})

//Use the table.setOptions API to merge our fully controlled state onto the table instance
table.setOptions(prev => ({
  ...prev, //preserve any other options that we have set up above
  get state() {
    return state() //our fully controlled state overrides the internal state
  },
  onStateChange: setState //any state changes will be pushed up to our own state management
}))

So far, we have seen the on[State]Change and onStateChange table options work to "hoist" the table state changes into our own state management. However, there are a few things about these using these options that you should be aware of.

Specifying an on[State]Change callback tells the table instance that this will be a controlled state. If you do not specify the corresponding state value, that state will be "frozen" with its initial value.

const [sorting, setSorting] = createSignal([])
//...
const table = createSolidTable({
  columns,
  data,
  //...
  state: {
    get sorting() {
      return sorting() //required because we are using `onSortingChange`
    },
  },
  onSortingChange: setSorting, //makes the `state.sorting` controlled
})

The on[State]Change and onStateChange callbacks work exactly like the setState functions in React (Solid Setters). The updater values can either be a new state value or a callback function that takes the previous state value and returns the new state value.

What implications does this have? It means that if you want to add in some extra logic in any of the on[State]Change callbacks, you can do so, but you need to check whether or not the new incoming updater value is a function or value.

const [sorting, setSorting] = createSignal([])
const [pagination, setPagination] = createSignal({ pageIndex: 0, pageSize: 10 })

const table = createSolidTable({
  get columns() {
    return columns()
  },
  get data() {
    return data()
  },
  //...
  state: {
    get pagination() {
      return pagination()
    },
    get sorting() {
      return sorting()
    },
  }
  //syntax 1
  onPaginationChange: (updater) => {
    setPagination(old => {
      const newPaginationValue = updater instanceof Function ? updater(old) : updater
      //do something with the new pagination value
      //...
      return newPaginationValue
    })
  },
  //syntax 2
  onSortingChange: (updater) => {
    const newSortingValue = updater instanceof Function ? updater(sorting) : updater
    //do something with the new sorting value
    //...
    setSorting(updater) //normal state update
  }
})

All complex states in TanStack Table have their own TypeScript types that you can import and use. This can be handy for ensuring that you are using the correct data structures and properties for the state values that you are controlling.

import { createSolidTable, type SortingState } from '@tanstack/solid-table'
//...
const [sorting, setSorting] = createSignal<SortingState[]>([
  {
    id: 'age', //you should get autocomplete for the `id` and `desc` properties
    desc: true,
  }
])