Why VGrid over Grid

• Reads columns in declaration order for both POJOs and Java records (the core introspector returns them in a random order).
• Falls back to Jackson when the default Vaadin mechanism cannot resolve a column (e.g. for default methods introduced in Java 8).
• Column.getStyle() actually applies the style – the core API silently drops style rules.
• Adds an optional built-in column selector menu similar to the one in Vaadin 8.

Column styling with typed Style methods

Column.getStyle() returns the same Style instance you use elsewhere in Flow, so strongly typed setters like setBackground, setTextAlign or setOutline are available – no more set("border", "1px solid") string fiddling.

VGrid<Person> grid = new VGrid<>(Person.class);
grid.setItems(people);

grid.getColumnByKey("firstName")
    .setHeader("First name")
    .getStyle()
        .setBackground("red")
        .setColor("white")
        .setFont("bold 20px Arial")
        .setTextAlign(Style.TextAlign.RIGHT)
        .setOutline("2px dotted black");

Assigning the same rule to multiple columns reuses the underlying style element, so the overhead of styling many columns stays small:

grid.getColumnByKey("firstName").getStyle().set("color", "red");
// Reuses the "color: red" style element from above
grid.getColumnByKey("lastName").getStyle().set("color", "red");

Per-row styling with a RowStyler

withRowStyler lets you compute a row's style from the item itself. The style is applied to the whole row without template tricks:

VGrid<Person> grid = new VGrid<>(Person.class)
    .withRowStyler((person, style) -> {
        if (person.getId() % 5 == 0) {
            style.setColor("blue");
            style.setBackgroundColor("lightgray");
        }
    });

Grid-wide CellFormatter

Rather than configuring each column's renderer individually, a single CellFormatter can format values for every column. It receives the column and the cell value, and returns the string to display.

VGrid<Person> grid = new VGrid<>(Person.class)
    .withCellFormatter((column, value) -> {
        if (value instanceof LocalDateTime dt) {
            return dt.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_LOCAL_DATE);
        }
        // Target specific columns by header text or key if needed:
        // if (column.getHeaderText().contains("Wind")) {
        //     return "%.0f m/s".formatted((Double) value);
        // }
        return VGrid.CellFormatter.defaultVaadinFormatting(value);
    });

VGrid.CellFormatter.defaultVaadinFormatting handles the common cases (null becomes the empty string, everything else goes through String.valueOf), so your formatter only has to worry about the types it wants to customise.

Built-in column selector menu

Enable an in-header menu that lets users show or hide columns:

VGrid<Person> grid = new VGrid<>(Person.class)
    .withColumnSelector();

Works with records

No extra setup is needed for Java records – columns appear in the order the components are declared in the record:

record Person(String name, int age) {}

VGrid<Person> grid = new VGrid<>(Person.class);
grid.setItems(
    new Person("Alice", 25),
    new Person("Bob", 30),
    new Person("Charlie", 22)
);

setColumns("age", "name") still works if you want a different order.