Dynamic Tables

Description

Need a powerful table block that works beautifully in the Gutenberg / Block Editor? Dynamic Tables gives you a responsive, user friendly, and inline-editable table block that beats the limitations of the default table block — without complex shortcode plugins or heavy imports.

Highlights:
* Create new tables with your own columns & rows right in the block editor
* Resize and reformat columns and rows, set header rows, define grid-lines
* Fully responsive — tables won’t break on mobile or misalign in complex layouts
* Editable: Make your tables quickly updatable inside content without leaving the editor
* Lightweight and fast — no bulky page-builders required
* Built with multisite in mind (use on individual site basis)
* Built with developers in mind — API architecture supports future external data sources

Whether you’re building comparison tables, product listings, directory lookup tables or publishing data-rich content — Dynamic Tables gives you a simple, elegant solution.

Features

• Gutenberg native block: “Dynamic Table”
• Add / delete / reorder columns and rows
• Header row support + header grid lines
• Adjustable column widths (and row heights)
• Inline editing of cell text
• Fully responsive: tables scale, wrap and adapt to mobile screens
• Works on multisite installations (activate per site)
• Clean semantic HTML output for SEO and accessibility
• Lightweight footprint and compatible with most themes
• Future-ready API layer for importing external data sources (in roadmap)

Why Choose Dynamic Tables over the Default Table Block?

The default WordPress Table block is well-suited for simple, static tables. However, as content becomes more structured or data-driven, its limitations become more apparent.

Dynamic Tables is designed specifically for tables that require ongoing updates, consistent structure, and reliable responsive behavior.

With Dynamic Tables you can:
* Edit table content inline without rebuilding the table
* Maintain consistent column and row structure as content evolves
* Present data in a way that remains readable across desktop and mobile devices
* Build tables intended for comparisons, listings, and structured datasets
* Avoid the need for shortcode-based table plugins or external builders

If your use case goes beyond basic layout tables and into repeatable, data-oriented content, Dynamic Tables provides a purpose-built solution that stays fully native to the block editor.

Roadmap

Some roadmap highlights include:
* Integrating Dynamic Tables with WordPress search
* Allowing for specific content types and formats for all rows in a column (e.g, images, links, buttons, numeric formats, etc.) without the need to format each cell
* Support for front end interactivity to sort and filter tables
* Importing in common formats (e.g., csv, xlsx)
* Enhanced responsive formatting for mobile devices
* Front end editing

For WordPress Developers

Dynamic Blocks has an architecture that is somewhat unique to the world of Gutenberg development in that the table definition and content are stored in custom WordPress database tables because we didn’t believe it structurally lent itself well to the Post data metaphore. These are the primary building blocks:
* Table data and definitions are abstracted through block entity types
* Entities natively call RESTful api’s
* There is an underlying WordPress REST API service that supports the loading and saving of table data
* The service interacts with a highly abstracted SQL layer which leverages WordPress WPDB
* The tables themselves leverage the newer CSS grid framework
* Much of the flexibility is derived from grid functinality that has been incorporated into mainstream web browsers as recently as 2024
* This framework provides responsiveness that doesn’t “break” table structure. Misalighed rows and columns, unexpected wrapping, and otherwise indecipherable tables have been beaten down.
* The API architecture can theoretically support data stored in external files or web services. We’re considering these capabilities in our roadmap.