Hide/Show Column in a HTML Table

I have an HTML table with several columns and I need to implement a column chooser using jQuery. When a user clicks on a checkbox I want to hide/show the corresponding column in the table. I would like to do this without attaching a class to every td in the table, is there a way to select an entire column using jQuery? Below is an example of the HTML.

<table>
	<thead>
		<tr><th class="col1">Header 1</th><th class="col2">Header 2</th><th class="col3">Header 3</th></tr>
	</thead>
    <tr><td>Column1</td><td>Column2</td><td>Column3</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Column1</td><td>Column2</td><td>Column3</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Column1</td><td>Column2</td><td>Column3</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Column1</td><td>Column2</td><td>Column3</td></tr>
</table>

<form>
	<input type="checkbox" name="col1" checked="checked" /> Hide/Show Column 1 <br />
	<input type="checkbox" name="col2" checked="checked" /> Hide/Show Column 2 <br />
	<input type="checkbox" name="col3" checked="checked" /> Hide/Show Column 3 <br />
</form>

Answer

January 23, 2018

KyleMit

Here's a little more fully featured answer that provides some user interaction on a per column basis. If this is going to be a dynamic experience, there needs to be a clickable toggle on each column that indicates the ability to hide the column, and then a way to restore previously hidden columns.

That would look something like this in JavaScript:

$('.hide-column').click(function(e){
  var $btn = $(this);
  var $cell = $btn.closest('th,td')
  var $table = $btn.closest('table')

  // get cell location - https://stackoverflow.com/a/4999018/1366033
  var cellIndex = $cell[0].cellIndex + 1;

  $table.find(".show-column-footer").show()
  $table.find("tbody tr, thead tr")
        .children(":nth-child("+cellIndex+")")
        .hide()
})

$(".show-column-footer").click(function(e) {
    var $table = $(this).closest('table')
    $table.find(".show-column-footer").hide()
    $table.find("th, td").show()

})

To support this, we'll add some markup to the table. In each column header, we can add something like this to provide a visual indicator of something clickable

<button class="pull-right btn btn-default btn-condensed hide-column" 
            data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="bottom" title="Hide Column">
    <i class="fa fa-eye-slash"></i>  
</button>

We'll allow the user to restore columns via a link in the table footer. If it's not persistent by default, then toggling it on dynamically in the header could jostle around the table, but you can really put it anywhere you'd like:

<tfoot class="show-column-footer">
   <tr>
    <th colspan="4"><a class="show-column" href="#">Some columns hidden - click to show all</a></th>
  </tr>
</tfoot>

That's the basic functionality. Here's a demo below with a couple more things fleshed out. You can also add a tooltip to the button to help clarify its purpose, style the button a little more organically to a table header, and collapse the column width in order to add some (somewhat wonky) css animations to make the transition a little less jumpy.

Working Demo in jsFiddle & Stack Snippets:

$(function() {
  // on init
  $(".table-hideable .hide-col").each(HideColumnIndex);

  // on click
  $('.hide-column').click(HideColumnIndex)

  function HideColumnIndex() {
    var $el = $(this);
    var $cell = $el.closest('th,td')
    var $table = $cell.closest('table')

    // get cell location - https://stackoverflow.com/a/4999018/1366033
    var colIndex = $cell[0].cellIndex + 1;

    // find and hide col index
    $table.find("tbody tr, thead tr")
      .children(":nth-child(" + colIndex + ")")
      .addClass('hide-col');
      
    // show restore footer
    $table.find(".footer-restore-columns").show()
  }

  // restore columns footer
  $(".restore-columns").click(function(e) {
    var $table = $(this).closest('table')
    $table.find(".footer-restore-columns").hide()
    $table.find("th, td")
      .removeClass('hide-col');

  })

  $('[data-toggle="tooltip"]').tooltip({
    trigger: 'hover'
  })

})

body {
  padding: 15px;
}

.table-hideable td,
.table-hideable th {
  width: auto;
  transition: width .5s, margin .5s;
}

.btn-condensed.btn-condensed {
  padding: 0 5px;
  box-shadow: none;
}


/* use class to have a little animation */
.hide-col {
  width: 0px !important;
  height: 0px !important;
  display: block !important;
  overflow: hidden !important;
  margin: 0 !important;
  padding: 0 !important;
  border: none !important;
}

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.3.7/css/bootstrap.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/bootswatch/3.3.7/paper/bootstrap.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.3.7/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>




<table class="table table-condensed table-hover table-bordered table-striped table-hideable">

  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>
        Controller
        <button class="pull-right btn btn-default btn-condensed hide-column" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="bottom" title="Hide Column">
          <i class="fa fa-eye-slash"></i>  
        </button>
      </th>
      <th class="hide-col">
        Action
        <button class="pull-right btn btn-default btn-condensed hide-column" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="bottom" title="Hide Column">
          <i class="fa fa-eye-slash"></i>  
        </button>
      </th>
      <th>
        Type
        <button class="pull-right btn btn-default btn-condensed hide-column" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="bottom" title="Hide Column">
          <i class="fa fa-eye-slash"></i>  
        </button>
      </th>
      <th>
        Attributes
        <button class="pull-right btn btn-default btn-condensed hide-column" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="bottom" title="Hide Column">
          <i class="fa fa-eye-slash"></i>  
        </button>
      </th>
  </thead>
  <tbody>

    <tr>
      <td>Home</td>
      <td>Index</td>
      <td>ActionResult</td>
      <td>Authorize</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>Client</td>
      <td>Index</td>
      <td>ActionResult</td>
      <td>Authorize</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>Client</td>
      <td>Edit</td>
      <td>ActionResult</td>
      <td>Authorize</td>
    </tr>

  </tbody>
  <tfoot class="footer-restore-columns">
    <tr>
      <th colspan="4"><a class="restore-columns" href="#">Some columns hidden - click to show all</a></th>
    </tr>
  </tfoot>
</table>