Title: Table with time sensitive data
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# Table with time sensitive data

 *  Resolved [ryanwalden](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ryanwalden/)
 * (@ryanwalden)
 * [13 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/)
 * I am hoping to create a website that displays information that is constantly 
   changing by day and time of day. All the values will be preset somewhere else
   on the website, but based on the particular time, I would like my table to know
   which data to display.
 * I’m not a very experienced programmer, though I am a quick learner, and it seems
   to me that I would need to write a code for each entry area to tell it which 
   option to display based on the time.
 * My ultimate question is, if I was able to write this code, would this table be
   able to display the results in numeric form?
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tablepress/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tablepress/)

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
 * (@tobiasbg)
 * [13 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/#post-3262399)
 * Hi,
 * thanks for your question.
 * Unfortunately, something like this is not really possible with TablePress, as
   that’s not really the intended use case. TablePress was designed to show static
   data, but and is not really suited for such highly dynamical data that you describe.
   TablePress wouldn’t be useful for that anyway, as you wouldn’t be using the managing
   functions anyway, and I can imagine that you are mostly interested in the sorting/
   search/pagination features.
 * So, instead, I suggest that you do this without TablePress, but with some custom
   programming, for example via PHP in a WordPress Page Template. That PHP code 
   would need to get the data from the different areas of your site, and create 
   the HTML for an HTML table. You could then just manually add the sorting/search/
   pagination features by manually adding the JavaScript library that TablePress
   uses for this, DataTables from [http://www.datatables.net](http://www.datatables.net)
 * Regards,
    Tobias
 *  Thread Starter [ryanwalden](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ryanwalden/)
 * (@ryanwalden)
 * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/#post-3262489)
 * Tobias,
 * Thank you for taking the time to get back to me. I’ve been exploring this plugin
   and have found some ways around my issue.
 * One other question I was hoping you could answer is if it would be possible to
   restrict the search function to certain tagged word options. So rather than letting
   the user type the word in the search box, I would like to offer a menu of words
   that would narrow down their search. Let me know if/how this would be possible.
 * Much appreciated,
    -Ryan
 *  Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
 * (@tobiasbg)
 * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/#post-3262490)
 * Hi Ryan,
 * no problem, you are very welcome! Good to hear that you found a way around the
   initial problem!
 * About the restriction of the search: As the search is provided by the DataTables
   JavaScript library (see [http://www.datatables.net](http://www.datatables.net)),
   this would have to be implemented in JavaScript, ie. by using the DataTables 
   API for this. Unfortunately, I’m not an expert with that, so I can’t really help
   with that 🙁
    However, there is an add-on for DataTables, that automatically 
   adds drop downs of all column entries (one for each column), that might be useful:
   [http://datatables.net/extras/thirdparty/ColumnFilterWidgets/DataTables/extras/ColumnFilterWidgets/](http://datatables.net/extras/thirdparty/ColumnFilterWidgets/DataTables/extras/ColumnFilterWidgets/)
   I have packaged that DataTables add-on into a “TablePress Extension”, so that
   it can be used easily with TablePress. Just install and activate [https://github.com/downloads/TobiasBg/TablePress-Extensions/tablepress-datatables-column-filter-widgets.zip](https://github.com/downloads/TobiasBg/TablePress-Extensions/tablepress-datatables-column-filter-widgets.zip)
   as a regular WordPress plugin. You can then extend your Shortcode from something
   like
 *     ```
       [table id=1 /]
       ```
   
 * to
 *     ```
       [table id=1 datatables_columnfilterwidgets=true datatables_columnfilterwidgets_exclude_columns="2,3,5" /]
       ```
   
 * The first new parameter activates the feature, while the second parameter can
   be used to only show the drop down for desired columns.
 * When using this, you could then turn off the regular search input field by unchecking
   the “Search/Filtering” checkbox on the table’s “Edit” screen.
 * Regards,
    Tobias
 *  Thread Starter [ryanwalden](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ryanwalden/)
 * (@ryanwalden)
 * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/#post-3262491)
 * Tobias,
 * You’ve been more than helpful and it is very much appreciated. I’m still fairly
   new to programming and design so some of this stuff is hard for me to understand
   for the time being.
 * What would be great is if you could refer me to some reading material that explains
   DataTables in depth so I can really understand what I’m working with. It really
   seems to me that DataTables could be the key to the project I’m working on and
   I would really like to be able to just learn all the ins and outs of this plugin.
 * Thanks again for your help,
    Ryan
 *  Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
 * (@tobiasbg)
 * [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/#post-3262492)
 * Hi Ryan,
 * the best site for that would obviously be the DataTables website and its documentation,
   at [http://www.datatables.net](http://www.datatables.net)
    A good starting point
   might be the introduction and the “Get started” guide at [http://datatables.net/blog/Getting_started_with_DataTables%3A_First_steps](http://datatables.net/blog/Getting_started_with_DataTables%3A_First_steps)
 * Note that DataTables is not directly a WordPress plugin. It is more of a general
   JavaScript library, that can be applied to any HTML table (and that’s what TablePress
   does with its tables).
 * Best wishes,
    Tobias

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/table-with-time-sensitive-data/#post-3262492)
 * Status: resolved