Features of the Grid Tab

This section describes the features of the Grid tab. It covers the following topics:

Expanding and Collapsing Nodes

Collapsing Empty Nodes

Renaming Nodes

Resizing Columns

Showing Row Tag Names

Expanding and Collapsing Nodes

When you first display a document in the Grid tab, the document is collapsed so that it shows just the root element (here it is <books>) and its name attribute ( My books), as shown in Figure 127.

Figure 127. Default Display - Document Elements Are Collapsed

A plus sign displayed to the left of the node name indicates that this node has child nodes. You can click the plus sign to display a subgrid that displays the child nodes, as shown in Figure 128.

Figure 128. Click Plus Signs to Expand Collapsed Tables

You can continue to drill down in this fashion to view all values.

To expand a node, click the plus sign ( ).

Collapsing Empty Nodes

Some nodes in a document are simply containers - they have no content of their own. An example of a container node is the <authors> element in books.xml. The <authors> element is simply a container for one or more <author> elements, as shown in this excerpt of books.xml:


<authors> <author>David A. Chappel</author> <author>Tyler Jewell</author> </authors>

To streamline the display, Stylus Studio hides the tables that represent container nodes. Information about container nodes is displayed in the child node's header. Figure 129 shows the default display for the author element. Notice that the header, book/authors/author, contains information about the container node, authors.

Figure 129. Table Headers Show Full Path

If you want, however, you can display the tables associated with container nodes, as shown in Figure 130.

Figure 130. Container Nodes Are Hidden by Default

The table associated with the authors node now appears in the grid; it is empty (it has no rows) because it is a container. The elements it contains are displayed in their own table, authors/author.

To display container nodes, click Simplified View ( ).

This action is also available from the XML > Grid Editing menu and from the grid shortcut menu.

Renaming Nodes

You can rename container nodes directly in the grid.

To rename a node:

1. Double-click the header that represents the node you want to rename.

The node name is selected.

2. Type the name you want to use for the node.

3. Press Enter (or click elsewhere in the grid or grid background).

Resizing Columns

When you expand a node, Stylus Studio displays it in uniform columns. You can resize columns to any width you prefer by dragging the handle on the right side of the column header, as shown in Figure 131.

Figure 131. Resize Columns by Dragging the Right Handle

To resize a column, drag the handle on the right side of the column header.

Showing Row Tag Names

In the grid view of a structured XML document, each child element of a node corresponds to a row in a table. For example, the <books> node of books.xml contains nine child elements; each row is an instance of the <book> element. To preserve space in the grid, the tag names of child elements are not displayed as a separate column in the table. Rather, as shown in Figure 128, this information is displayed in the table header itself.

If you want, you can display the tag name for child elements in their own columns, as shown in Figure 132.