The CSV, or “comma-separated-values” format is widely used; it’s simple, lightweight, almost any software can generate it, and users can even create it manually. Basically, it’s just a text file, where cells are separated with commas, rows are separated with new lines, and the first line contains table headers. CSV has been supported by wpDataTables since its first release.
You can download the file that was used to generate this table from this link. The table rendered from this file is below.
See the step-by-step tutorial below the table.
The first thing you will need to do to create a CSV-based table in WordPress is to create the CSV file with your data set in your favorite software e.g., MS Excel, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Numbers, Google Spreadsheet, or any other.
Save the file at a location where you can easily find it later.
After you saved the CSV file with your data, the next step is to go to your WordPress admin and create a new wpDataTable from the CSV data source.
Please open your WordPress admin, and:
1. Go to wpDataTables -> Create a Table, and choose Create a table linked to an existing data source option.
2. Provide a name for the new wpDataTable in the “Table title” input to help you identify it.
3. Select “CSV file” as the Input data source type.
4. The WordPressMedia Library will automatically be selected as the File location and it is used when you’re creating a table by uploading a CSV file.
5. Click on the Browse button to open the WordPress media library.
6. Upload the CSV file that you prepared (or select one of the CSV files you previously uploaded into your Media Library); then click Use selected file.
6. Click Save Changes, so wpDataTables reads the CSV file you uploaded and initializes the columns’ metadata.
Creating a table linked to a CSV file by providing its URL is pretty much the same as it is for creating a table by uploading a CSV file. The only difference is that you would choose the URL from any domain option instead of the WordPress Media Library option under File location when creating the table.
That is it, everything else is the same as when you’re creating a table linked to an uploaded Excel file.
At this point table is already prepared. But to improve its usability, we need to define several additional settings for the table and its columns. For this case, we define these settings:
1. Enabled Limit table width checkbox and disable Table title checkbox on “Display” tab.
2. Set the Filter type for “Country“, “Region” and “Color” columns as “Select box”.
3. Set the Filter type for “Grape” and “Sweetness” columns as “Checkbox“.
When the configuration of your CSV-based wpDataTable is complete, you simply need to insert it to your post or page.
Open (or create a new) a WordPress post or page, place the cursor in the position where you want to insert your table, click the “Insert a wpDataTable” button in the MCE editor panel, and choose the CSV-based table that you prepared.
Or, if you prefer to do things manually, you can simply copy&paste the wpDataTable shortcode (you can find it on the wpDataTables browse page, or in the wpDataTable edit page).
If you are using Gutenberg editor, Elementor, or WPBakery page builder, you can check out the section for Adding wpDataTables shortcodes on the page.
