cols_hide: Hide one or more columns

Description

The cols_hide() function allows us to hide one or more columns from appearing in the final output table. While it's possible and often desirable to omit columns from the input table data before introduction to the gt() function, there can be cases where the data in certain columns is useful (as a column reference during formatting of other columns) but the final display of those columns is not necessary.

Usage

cols_hide(data, columns)

Value

An object of class gt_tbl.

Arguments

data: A table object that is created using the gt() function.
columns: The column names to hide from the output display table. Values provided that do not correspond to column names will be disregarded.

Examples

Use countrypops to create a gt table. Hide the country_code_2 and country_code_3 columns with cols_hide().

countrypops %>%
  dplyr::filter(country_name == "Mongolia") %>%
  tail(5) %>%
  gt() %>%
  cols_hide(columns = c(country_code_2, country_code_3))

This image of a table was generated from the first code example in the `cols_hide()` help file.

Use countrypops to create a gt table. Use the population column to provide the conditional placement of footnotes, then hide that column and one other. Note that the order of the cols_hide() and tab_footnote() statements has no effect.

countrypops %>%
  dplyr::filter(country_name == "Mongolia") %>%
  tail(5) %>%
  gt() %>%
  cols_hide(columns = c(country_code_3, population)) %>%
  tab_footnote(
    footnote = "Population above 3,000,000.",
    locations = cells_body(
      columns = year,
      rows = population > 3000000
    )
  )

This image of a table was generated from the second code example in the `cols_hide()` help file.

Function ID

4-8

Details

The hiding of columns is internally a rendering directive, so, all columns that are 'hidden' are still accessible and useful in any expression provided to a rows argument. Furthermore, the cols_hide() function (as with many gt functions) can be placed anywhere in a pipeline of gt function calls (acting as a promise to hide columns when the timing is right). However there's perhaps greater readability when placing this call closer to the end of such a pipeline. The cols_hide() function quietly changes the visible state of a column (much like the cols_unhide() function) and doesn't yield warnings or messages when changing the state of already-invisible columns.