How create table with variable number of columns?

Question

I am creating table data in Java. Number of columns is variable. How I can write <table> in UIX.
Here is code of one of my unsuccessful attempt:
<provider>
<!- get table data like DataObjectList-->
<data name="ReportTableData">
<method class="app.ReportTableData" method="getTableData"/>
</data>
<!- get names of columns like DataObjectList-->
<data name="ColumnNames">
<method class="app.ReportTableData" method="getColumnNames"/>
</data>
</provider>
<table data:tableData="@ReportTableData">
<contents data:childData="@ColumnNames">
<text data:text="nameColumn"/>
</contents>
</table>
I hoped that I can get cell data by key, where key is name of column. But cells of table contain only names of columns.
Please help me, where I mistaken?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi Sergey,
The UIX table implementation relies on a childData like mechanism internally to iterate over the rows. For instance, when you databind the text attribute of the UINode used to stamp out each column, you are relying on the uix:table iterating over the table data using the data object for the current row when evaluating your column stamp.
Setting the data:childData attribute on the table's contents element conflicts with UIX's internal iteration over the tableData. For this reason, we don't support specifying a dynamic number of table columns in UIX XML.
This doesn't mean that you can't do it, there are different strategies. If you've got a finite and known set of columns, you can specify each possible column and then databind the rendered attribute of each one to hide and show it as appropriate. Another, often cleaner approach, is to build this subtree of UINodes in Java code.