Data Loading

There are several simple ways of loading data into dhtmlxTreeGrid:

adding data via a configuration property
load data from an external file
load data from a local data source

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

Preparing data set

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

var dataset = [
    {
        "id": 0,
        "a": 1,
        "b": "Linwood Long long long",
        "c": "Petersen",
        "d": "Dahlgreen Place"
    },
    {
        "id": 1,
        "parent": 0,
        "a": 2,
        "b": "Edenburg",
        "c": "Agnes",
        "d": "Gem Street"
    },
    // more columns
];

Each object in the data set contains configuration of a grid row. The structure of a row is rather flexible. It may include:

rowId - (string|number) optional, the id of a row. In case you haven't specified ids of rows, they will be auto-generated
parent - (string|number) the ID of the parent row
columnContent - (string|number) content of a column as key:value pairs, where key is the id of a column and value is any content you want to add into the column

Adding data on TreeGrid initialization

You can specify data you want to add into TreeGrid on the initialization stage. Make use of the data configuration property, as in:

var treegrid = new dhx.TreeGrid("treegrid_container", {
    columns: [// columns config],
    data: dataset
});

External data loading

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

var treegrid = new dhx.TreeGrid("treegrid_container", {
treegrid.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:

treegrid.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 Tree Collection. Pass a predefined data set as a parameter of this method:

var treegrid = new dhx.TreeGrid("treegrid_container", {
treegrid.data.parse(dataset);

Saving and restoring state

To save the current state of a treegrid, use the serialize method of Data Collection. It converts the data of a treegrid into an array of JSON objects. Each JSON object contains the configuration of a separate row.

var state = treegrid1.data.serialize();

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

// creating a new treegrid
var treegrid2 = new dhx.TreeGrid(document.body);
// parsing the state of treegrid1 into treegrid2
treegrid2.data.parse(state);