What is Handsontable
Handsontable is a spreadsheet component written in JavaScript and not constrained by any external framework. It can be easily modified or extended with custom plugins. Handsontable also binds to any source using the JSON format and handles large amounts of data. You can easily do all CRUD operations and provide end-users with an Excel-like experience.
Take a look at this basic demo on JSFiddle for better insight.
Typical use cases
The list below is just to give you a rough idea on what you can do with Handsontable, but it doesn't limit you in any way. If you have already created an inspiring app, share it with others on our forum.
- Database editing
- Configuration controlling
- Data merging
- Workforce planning
- Sales reporting
- Financial analysis
Basic concepts
Handsontable introduces a new approach to building spreadsheets for web projects. Typically, libraries like this give you all the features in one, pre-built package. This is not very effective as spreadsheets are usually very complex and heavy tools, so even though you just need just a single feature, you end up with overhead code.
Handsontable is different as it allows you to exclude all the unnecessary plugins from the package. It's created with modularity in mind and most plugins are developed upon the lightweight core. Not all the features have been moved from the core to plugins yet, but we're nearly there.
Community Edition (CE) vs Pro
Handsontable Pro is a set of premium features built upon the open source core. We decided to separate these two projects to keep better transparency of the code and to be able to release fixes of the Pro version independently from our other projects.
Handsontable Community Edition, as a core technology, remains free and open source. We are proud that so many people have backed us during all these years. With their help we were able to find and fix thousands of issues and make this project much better and useful.
Getting help
In general, using Handsontable doesn't require high programming skills. However, if you need any custom modifications and have just started with JavaScript you may need some assistance from an experienced developer.
If you are new to Handsontable then head to the Quick start page which will give you a good idea on what features this library has.
If you find a bug, please open a new issue on GitHub. If you get stuck with something, then the best way to ask (or answer) a question is Stackoverflow. For further discussions head to our Forum and don't hesitate to share your thoughts and opinions.