PRC Block Tables

Table blocks for the Pew Research Center publishing platform.

PRC Block Tables ships the Gutenberg blocks used to author tabular data across Pew Research Center sites. It provides Power Table, a rich responsive data table; Power Spreadsheet, an Excel-like tabbed container; and Remote Pivot Table, a Remote Data Blocks template for pivoting tabular remote data. The plugin also registers an editor data store so other plugins can read structured per-sheet data.

Blocks

Power Table

prc-block/table — Create a powerful and flexible table with responsive design and sorting/filtering options.

Power Table stores its data as structured head, body, and foot rows rather than raw HTML. Key capabilities:

• Import or paste CSV data to populate the table.
• Configure per-column metadata via columnMeta — mark columns sortable, hidden, or rounded to a set number of decimals.
• Round numeric cells with roundDecimals (rendered as data-prc-round-decimals).
• Control responsive behavior: isScrollOnPc, isScrollOnMobile, isStackedOnMobile, sticky, and hasFixedLayout.
• Add a table title, caption, and source note.
• Style individual cells and columns.
• Validate data against a validationSchema, tracked by the isValid flag.

Power Table exposes block context for consumers:

Context key	Source attribute
prc-block/table/columnMeta	columnMeta
prc-block/table/validationSchema	validationSchema
prc-block/table/isValid	isValid

Generate Tabular Data (AI)

When the WordPress AI integration (ais-ai) is active, Power Table gains an optional Generate Tabular Data feature. It adds a "Suggest with AI" control in the editor that generates table content from Pew Research Center material. The feature is editor-side only and registers the prc-ai/generate-tabular-data ability via the WordPress Abilities API.

Power Spreadsheet

prc-block/power-spreadsheet — An Excel-like tabbed container for Power Tables. Each tab is a sheet.

Power Spreadsheet allows only prc-block/table as inner blocks, so every sheet is a Power Table. An Excel-style tab row sits below the sheet content. The block tracks the visible sheet with the activeSheetIndex attribute; selecting a sheet table from the list view switches the active sheet.

Remote Pivot Table

prc-block/remote-pivot-table — Pivots tabular data from a Remote Data Blocks parent into tabbed core/table views. See docs/remote-pivot-table.md.

Soft runtime dependencies (not declared in Requires Plugins to avoid a circular header with block-library):

Dependency	Why
prc-block-library	Inner prc-block/tabs / prc-block/tab blocks and render_tabs() helper
remote-data-blocks	Parent block context (remote-data-blocks/remoteData)

Editor data store

Power Spreadsheet registers a @wordpress/data store named prc-block/power-spreadsheet. Other editor plugins use its selectors to read structured per-sheet data without parsing block markup.

Read one spreadsheet's sheets:

const sheets = wp.data
	.select('prc-block/power-spreadsheet')
	.getSheetData(spreadsheetClientId);

Each sheet returns { id, name, head, body, foot, columnMeta }. Use getSpreadsheetData( clientId ) for the same data wrapped as { sheets: [...] }.

Selector	Returns
getSheetData( clientId )	Array of sheet objects for the spreadsheet
getSpreadsheetData( clientId )	{ sheets: [...] } wrapper around the same data

Requirements

• WordPress 6.8+
• PHP 8.2+
• prc-scripts (must be active)

Development

Primary development happens in the prc-platform monorepo under plugins/prc-block-tables/. This repository is a public mirror of the built plugin, updated automatically by the platform release and ship workflows.

Build from the monorepo root:

npx turbo build --filter=@prc/block-tables

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.