Table Text

The “Table text” attribute enables the input of text data in a tabular structure with configured columns and any number of rows. The data is stored in a dedicated value table, so no own column is created in the MetaModel table for this attribute. Typical use cases:

• Multiple URLs or phone numbers per record (e.g. “URL + label”)

• Technical specifications with multiple rows (e.g. “property + value”)

• Opening hours (e.g. “weekday + from + to”)

• Price lists with multiple columns

The number and names of the columns are defined when creating the attribute. Any number of rows can then be added in the input form.

See also

For multilingual MetaModels, the attribute Translated Table Text is available.

Installation

The attribute is installed via the Contao Manager or Composer:

composer require metamodels/attribute_tabletext

Settings when Creating the Attribute

In addition to the general attribute settings (name, column name, description, override variants), the table text attribute offers the following specific options:

Option	Description
Column settings	Definition of the table columns. For each column the following are specified: Label — Name of the column (appears as column heading in the input form and in the frontend template) Width — Width of the column in the input form (e.g. 200px, 50%); has no effect on the frontend output. The number of rows in the column settings determines the number of columns in the table.
Minimum number of rows	Minimum number of data rows displayed in the input form (0 = no minimum).
Maximum number of rows	Maximum number of data rows that can be entered (0 = no limit).
Disable sorting	Hides the up/down buttons for manual row sorting in the input form.

Settings in Render Settings

The table text attribute has its own render setting:

Option	Description
Hide table header	Hides the column headings (labels) in the frontend output.
Template	Selection of a custom template for the output. If no template is specified, the output is as an HTML table.
CSS class	Optional CSS class added to the output element.

Settings in the Input Form

When the table text attribute is added to an input form, the following options are available:

Display

Option	Description
Backend class	CSS classes for the display of the field in the backend form.
Template for backend	Selection of a custom widget template for the backend form.
Template for frontend	Selection of a custom widget template for frontend editing (only available if the “Frontend Editing” extension is installed).

Filter Rules

The table text attribute can be used with the following filter rules:

Filter rule	Note
Levenshtein-based search	Similarity search with typo tolerance across all cell values; requires the package attribute_levenshtein.
Loupe	Full-text index search across all cell values; requires the package filter_loupe (from MM 2.4).

Special Functions

Database storage

The table values are not stored in the MetaModel table, but in the dedicated value table tl_metamodel_tabletext with the columns item_id, att_id, row (row index), col (column index), and value. This means no column is created in the MM table and no database migration is needed.

Column structure in the template

In the frontend template, the values are available as a nested array: $arrData['raw'] contains rows (row) with columns (col_0, col_1, …), where the column names are automatically generated from the column settings.