• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio®
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
  • Creating XML Documents
  • Using Document Wizards to Create XML
  • Updating XML Documents
  • Using the Text Editor
  • Updating DOM Tree Structures
  • Using the Grid Tab
    • Layout of the Grid Tab
    • Features of the Grid Tab
      • Expanding and Collapsing Nodes
      • Collapsing Empty Nodes
      • Renaming Nodes
      • Resizing Columns
      • Showing Row Tag Names
    • Moving Around the Grid Tab
    • Selecting Items in the Grid
    • How Grid Changes Affect the XML Document
    • Working with Rows
    • Working with Columns
    • Working with Tables
  • Diffing Folders and XML Documents
  • Using Schemas with XML Documents
  • Converting XML to Its Canonical Form
  • Querying XML Documents Using XPath
  • Printing XML Documents
  • Saving XML Documents
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Working with WSDL Documents
• Chapter 13: Building XML Pipelines
• Chapter 14: Publishing XML Data
• Chapter 15: Integrating with Third-Party File Systems
• Chapter 16: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 17: The Stylus Studio Java API
• Chapter 18: Stylus Studio GUI Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > Features of the Grid Tab

Features of the Grid Tab

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

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 115.

Figure 115. 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 116.

Figure 116. 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 117 shows the default display for the author element. Notice that the header, book/authors/author, contains information about the container node, authors.

Figure 117. Table Headers Show Full Path

If you want, however, you can display the tables associated with container nodes, as shown in Figure 118.

Figure 118. 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:

The node name is selected.

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 119.

Figure 119. 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 116, 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 120.

Figure 120. Displaying the Root's Child Element

To toggle the display child element names, click Toggle Row Tag Name ( ).

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