Table State (Vue) 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 = useVueTable({
  columns,
  data: dataRef, // Reactive data support
  //...
})

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

New in v8.20.0

The useVueTable hook now supports reactive data. This means you can pass a Vue ref or computed containing your data to the data-option. The table will automatically react to changes in the data.

const columns = [
  { accessor: 'id', Header: 'ID' },
  { accessor: 'name', Header: 'Name' }
]

const dataRef = ref([
  { id: 1, name: 'John' },
  { id: 2, name: 'Jane' }
])

const table = useVueTable({
  columns,
  data: dataRef, // Pass the reactive data ref
})

// Later, updating dataRef will automatically update the table
dataRef.value = [
  { id: 1, name: 'John' },
  { id: 2, name: 'Jane' },
  { id: 3, name: 'Doe' }
]

⚠️ shallowRef is used under the hood for performance reasons, meaning that the data is not deeply reactive, only the .value is. To update the data you have to mutate the data directly.

const dataRef = ref([
  { id: 1, name: 'John' },
  { id: 2, name: 'Jane' }
])

// This will NOT update the table ❌
dataRef.value.push({ id: 4, name: 'John' })

// This will update the table ✅
dataRef.value = [
  ...dataRef.value,
  { id: 4, name: 'John' }
]

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

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

const table = useVueTable({
  columns,
  data: tableQuery.data,
  //...
  state: {
    get columnFilters() {
      return columnFilters.value
    },
    get sorting() {
      return sorting.value
    },
    get pagination() {
      return pagination.value
    }
  },
  onColumnFiltersChange: updater => {
    columnFilters.value =
      updater instanceof Function
        ? updater(columnFilters.value)
        : updater
  },
  onSortingChange: updater => {
    sorting.value =
      updater instanceof Function
        ? updater(sorting.value)
        : updater
  },
  onPaginationChange: updater => {
    pagination.value =
      updater instanceof Function
        ? updater(pagination.value)
        : updater
  },
})
//...

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 react 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 = useVueTable({
  get columns() {
    return columns.value
  },
  data,
  //... Note: `state` values are NOT passed in yet
})

const state = ref({
  ...table.initialState,
  pagination: {
    pageIndex: 0,
    pageSize: 15
  }
})
const setState = updater => {
  state.value = updater instanceof Function ? updater(state.value) : updater
}

//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.value
  },
  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 = ref([])
const setSorting = updater => {
  sorting.value = updater instanceof Function ? updater(sorting.value) : updater
}
//...
const table = useVueTable({
  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. 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.

This is why we have the updater instanceof Function check in the setState functions above. This check allows us to handle both raw values and callback functions in the same function.

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