You can get actual state of the dhtmlxGrid using the serialization feature. The Standard Edition of dhtmlxGrid provides the methods for Serialization to CSV format. PRO Edition allows you to use methods for Serialization to XML. Using them, you can define whether you should serialize user data or not, include just changed rows to serialization, serialize grid structure info, etc.
dhtmlxGrid PRO Features Overview
Here we gathered together the main features of dhtmlxGrid that are available in PRO Edition only. It should help you to explore all the features of the component while you're testing a trial version.
Data Sources Support
Working with big datasets
If you work with big amounts of data (thousands of records), it can be pretty annoying to scroll the list all the way down to find the proper record. Using the paging feature, you can divide your list into the several pages. When a user is scrolling, dhtmlxGrid automatically loads new records from a database and displays them.
Grid structure/operations
Advanced drag-and-drop allows you to customize almost any aspect of drag-and-drop functionality. You can redefine the text that will be displayed for the dragging items or deny dragging for some of them. You can customize the 'drag' option to highlight the background of dragged item when it enters the borders of possible dropping.
The Standard Edition of dhtmlxGrid allows you to use more than one header line in your app. To use multi-line footers, you have to get the PRO Edition.
By default, dhtmlxGrid displays data on the page without any grouping. Using the grouping feature, you can group data by rows or by columns. The rows in such views can be filtered by the values of the specified column. Such approach allows to divide the tables into the logical blocks and makes them more intuitive:
Sub-grids allows you to integrate two dhtmlxGrid instances together. This feature might be helpful if you work with two portions of related data and don't want to switch back and forth between different pages:
Frozen columns feature allows you to separate the table into two parts. The first one will be fixed and contain only the first columns on the right-hand side. The second one is movable and can be scrolled horizontally:
You can activate the possibility of merging cells. Colspan and rowspan features work the same way as in HTML tables.
PRO version allows you to use Math equations for data from your tables. dhtmlxGrid evaluates the required math expressions and presents the result in the related cells.
In-cell editors
You can use collapsible sub-rows that can present some extra data related to a row in the grid. Such rows allow to save space without removing the necessary data from the grid:
According to the type of data that is presented in the grid, a user may want to switch between the ways of editing this data. PRO version of dhtmlxGrid allows to use dhtmlxCombo, dhtmlxGrid, and dhtmlxTree as a cell editor.
Other Features
The PRO version of the library provides support for different keyboard mappings which can help users to work with grids the way as they used to work. You can switch between the native keymap, MS Excel keymap, MS Access keymap.
The library provides different methods that you can use to manipulate cookies. These methods can be used for saving and restoring grid configuration from cookies.
You can integrate dhtmlxGrid into the HTML form. It'll allow you to send the data that grid contains to the server as a part of form submitting.