Data Loading

There are several ways of loading List items:

from an external file
from a local data source

First, you need to prepare a data set that will be loaded into List.

Preparing data set

dhtmlxList expects loaded data in the JSON format. Here is an example of an appropriate data set:

var dataset = [
    {"value": "1st item", "id": "1"},
    {"value": "2nd item", "id": "2"},
    {"value": "3rd item", "id": "3"},
    {"value": "4th item", "id": "4"}
]

Each object in the data set contains a number of key:value pairs that represent attributes of List items. You can specify your own template of rendering List items with the help of the template configuration option.

External data loading

To load data from an external file, make use of the load method of Data Collection. It takes the URL of the file with data as a parameter:

var list = new dhx.List("list_container");
list.data.load("../common/dataset.json");

The component will make an AJAX call and expect the remote URL to provide valid JSON data.

Data loading is asynchronous, so you need to wrap any after-loading code into a promise:

list.data.load("/some/data").then(function(){
   // some logic here
});

Loading from local source

To load data from a local data source, use the parse method of Data Collection. Pass a predefined data set as a parameter of this method:

var list = new dhx.List("list_container");
list.data.parse(dataset);

Saving and restoring state

To save the current state of a list, use the serialize method of Data Collection. It converts the data of a list into an array of JSON objects. Each JSON object contains a set of key:value pairs that represent attributes of List items.

var state = list1.data.serialize();

Then you can parse the data stored in the saved state array to a different list. For example:

// creating a new list
var list2 = new dhx.List(document.body);
// parsing the state of list1 into list2
list2.data.parse(state);