How to hide a table row conditionally

Since Carbone v4.3.0, the drop formatter is available to delete table rows and any element from a document. Be sure to request version 4 (or higher) of Carbone:

• For the Cloud API: set the header "carbone-version":4
• For the Cloud Studio: Click on the top-right "settings" icon > click on "version" > Select 4.X.X.

Drop one row

For the following exemple, the table prints an supply order sheet and the goal is to drop the "order date" if the value empty.
The tag {d.list[i].orderDate:ifEM:drop(row)} is placed within the "Order date" row, and all the elements it comprises are also removed if the condition is validated. Details:

• the d.list[i].orderDate value is a description as a string type coming from the JSON dataset
• the :ifEM is a conditional formatter checking if the value is empty.
• the :drop(row) formatter is fired if the previous condition is true. The first argument row is required to defined the element to remove.

After generating the PDF, the "order date" row is hidden for the banana element because the JSON dataset provides an empty string for the orderDate attribute.

Drop multiple rows

After following the drop one row tutorial, a comment section is added to the document.
The goal is to delete the comment section (3 rows), if the comment list is empty on the JSON dataset.
The tag {d.list[i].comments:ifEM:drop(row, 3)} is placed within the "Order date" row. Details:

• the d.list[i].comments value is a list of comments coming from the JSON dataset
• the :ifEM is a conditional formatter checking if the value is empty.
• the :drop(row, 3) formatter is fired if the previous condition is true. The first argument row is required to defined the element, and 3 defines the number of rows to delete.

After generating the PDF with Carbone, the comment sections are hidden for all elements except the third one because the JSON dataset provides a comment list with messages.

JSON dataset

{
  "list": [
    {
      "name": "Apple",
      "quantity": 20,
      "price": 1,
      "origin": "France",
      "img": "https://...",
      "orderDate": "2022/07",
      "comments": []
    },
    {
      "name": "Banana",
      "quantity": 50,
      "price": 2,
      "origin": "France",
      "img": "https://...",
      "comments": []
    },
    {
      "name": "Grappes",
      "quantity": 15,
      "price": 3,
      "origin": "France",
      "orderDate": "2022/08",
      "comments": [
        {
          "date": "2022/08/22",
          "name": "John",
          "msg": "@Eric is it possible to add more grappes for the next order?"
        },
        {
          "date": "2022/08/23",
          "name": "Eric",
          "msg": "Yes sure, let me do that in couple of minutes."
        },
        {
          "date": "2022/08/24",
          "name": "John",
          "msg": "Thank you!"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Redcurrant",
      "quantity": 30,
      "price": 0.5,
      "orderDate": "2022/09",
      "origin": "",
      "img": "https://..."
    }
  ]
}

Updated on: 03/07/2025