---
id: js-table
title: Showing a table
sidebar_label: Desktop Plugin - Table
---
import useBaseUrl from '@docusaurus/useBaseUrl';
import Link from '@docusaurus/Link';

<img alt="Android Tutorial App" src={useBaseUrl("img/android-tutorial-desktop.png")} />

## Building a Table

We have found that one of the most useful things you can do to understand how your app works
is to give you easy access to the underlying data used to display items on screen. A very
easy way of doing this is by showing the data in a table. We have optimized for this
particular use case that makes it dead-simple to expose your data in a table that you
can sort, filter and select items for more detailed information.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will be editing the `index.tsx` file that was generated in the previous scaffolding step, and update it as follows:

### Row Types

We start by defining what our table rows look like as types:

```typescript
type Row = {
  id: number,
  title: string,
  url: string,
};
```

It is important that you have some unique identifier for every row so
that we know when something new was added to the table. We will use the
`id` field here for this purpose.

### Columns

Next, we define which columns to show and how to display them:

```typescript
import {DataTableColumn} from 'flipper-plugin';

const columns: DataTableColumn<Row>[] = [
  {
    key: 'title',
    width: 150,
  },
  {
    key: 'url',
    title: 'URL',
  },
];
```

The keys used here will show up again in the next step when building
your rows, so keep them consistent. The `title` we define for each column will show up as the header at the top of the table, and will be default to the `key` value if omitted.

For the `width` you can either choose a fixed number (pixels), a percentage, or leave it out 
to distribute the remaining available space.

### Configuring the table

With a type describing the data we'll be storing, `Row`, and a descriptions of the columns to display, getting up table showing our data, including search / sort and a details view is now trivial!

```typescript
import {DataTableColumn, createTablePlugin} from 'flipper-plugin';

module.exports = createTablePlugin<Row>({
  columns,
  method: 'newRow',
  key: 'id',
});
```

The `method` refers to the method that should be listened to to fill the table with data. 
The string `"newRow"` that is used here refers back to identifier we used with `connection.send` to send our data to the Flipper desktop application in the previous step.

The `key` property is optional, but by setting it the `'id'` field will be used as identifier. As a result, once a `newRow` message arrives with an existing `id`, it will overwrite the old entry, rather than appending a new one.

The `createTablePlugin` API supports more options, which are documented [here](../extending/flipper-plugin.mdx#createtableplugin).

And that's it! Starting Flipper will now compile your
plugin and connect to the native side. It's a good
idea to start Flipper from the command line to see
any potential errors. The console in the DevTools
is a great source of information if something doesn't
work as expected, too.
The final result of this step can be seen at [index_table.tsx](https://github.com/facebook/flipper/blob/main/desktop/plugins/public/seamammals/src/index_table.tsx).

## What's next?

You now have an interactive table that you can sort,
filter and use to get additional information about
the stuff you see on screen.
`createTablePlugin` is a high level abstraction that takes care of both connection management and a standardized UI for the most common scenario. 

For many cases, this is already all you need. However,
sometimes you want to go the extra mile and want
to build something a bit more custom. That's what
we're going to do in the next part of our tutorial.
