Hiding column in attribute table by using PyQGIS

Question

Is there a way to hide a column in the attribute table by using PyQGIS?

By hiding I do not mean hiding only the edit widget, I would like to hide the column completely.

It is possible to achieve that by right-clicking on the column in the attribute table and selecting 'Hide column' or 'Organize columns...' but I did not find a way how to do it by using PyQGIS.

Answer 1

For QGIS versions QGIS 2.16 and higher

Let's define the following handy function:

def setColumnVisibility( layer, columnName, visible ):
 config = layer.attributeTableConfig()
 columns = config.columns()
 for column in columns:
 if column.name == columnName:
 column.hidden = not visible
 break
 config.setColumns( columns )
 layer.setAttributeTableConfig( config )

And then you can call it to hide or show columns in the attribute table. For example:

vLayer = iface.activeLayer()
setColumnVisibility( vLayer, 'FIRST_COLUMN', False ) # Hide FIRST_COLUMN
setColumnVisibility( vLayer, 'area', False ) # Hide area column
setColumnVisibility( vLayer, 'FIRST_COLUMN', True ) # Show FIRST_COLUMN
setColumnVisibility( vLayer, 'area', True ) # Show area column

• Bera: Nice! Is it possible to refresh/reload an open attribute table without having to close and open it to update changes in the column visibilities?
• Germán Carrillo: Unfortunately, I don't see a direct way to do that. Moreover, QgsAttributeTableDialog is not exposed through the API.
• Bera: I realized opening and closing it is good enough: attrTables = [d for d in QApplication.instance().allWidgets() if d.objectName() == u'QgsAttributeTableDialog' or d.objectName() == u'AttributeTable'] attrTables[0].close() iface.showAttributeTable(lyr) gis.stackexchange.com/questions/231574/… and gis.stackexchange.com/questions/68332/…

Answer 2

Another option is to use the setColumnHidden() method of the QgsAttributeTableConfig class.

from qgis.core import QgsProject
def hide_one_column(layer_name: str, column_name: str, column_hidden: bool) -> None:
 """
 Hides or shows a single column in the attribute table of a layer
 Parameters:
 ==========
 :param layer_name: name of the layer
 :param column_name: name of the target column
 :param column_hidden: if the column should be hidden
 """
 
 layer = QgsProject.instance().mapLayersByName(layer_name)[0]
 column_index = layer.fields().indexOf(column_name)
 layer_attr_table_config = layer.attributeTableConfig()
 layer_attr_table_config.setColumnHidden(column_index, column_hidden)
 layer.setAttributeTableConfig(layer_attr_table_config)
 return
hide_one_column('gis_osm_buildings', 'osm_id', True) # Hide "osm_id" field

P.S. To notice applied changes one must close and open the attribute table.

• ludwig: This function affects the wrong column, if there are action-columns before. German Carillos solution takes this into account.