@markstanley-nps thank you for taking the time to file this issue! Rendering tables with ViewComponents is something a lot of folks are looking to do, and it's cool to see your implementation ❤️ .

I do wonder if the collection behavior proposed here would be useful to you in this case.

Seeing how you have a proposed change here, might you be willing to open a PR?

Thanks for responding.

The collection behaviour here would simplify the interface for the developer when using the collection slot. However, it wouldn't solve my issue that the developer needs access to the slot instance in the page.

I had a think about this last night and there are other options for my use case. One would be to pass the list of fields in to the slot as part of the initialisation, which is what we used to do in our old UI system, but this starts getting complicated and messy when you need to configure each field

    <% @test_models.each do |o| %>
      <%= t.slot(:row, object: o, fields: [:email, :text, : checkbox] ) %>
    <% end %>

Having said that a system closer to to the above may allow me to avoid the need to have individual components and related templates for the cells at least for displaying tables. Potentially removing the need to have access to the view context in the slot, and keeping the implementation closer to the original idea behind slots.

I will try out a few ideas over the next couple of days and then open a PR

@joelhawksley I have tried out a few other ideas over the last couple of days, and for my use case I don't need the change I was proposing. The data I need to render in the table is in an array of objects so I can initialise the component with the array and the list of columns and I don't need to use slots.

If I was rendering a table with arbitrary data from the page, it is possible that the change I proposed would be useful so that you could set up the column within the rows. If I hit this issue then I will look at again. Potentially you may need to allow slots to be slotable themselves.

For anyone else playing with tables this is the key bits of the solution

On the page index.html.erb

<%= render(TableComponent.new(caption: 'Test Models', object_name: 'TestModel', objects: @test_models)) do |t| %>
  <% t.table_column(method: :text, header: true, width: 'one-half' ) %>
  <% t.table_column(method: :number, type: :number) %>
  <% t.table_column(method: :date ) %>
  <% t.table_column(method: :datetime ) %>
<% end %>

The above initialises the table component with the list of objects (test_models) and the list of columns. The table component has methods rows and columns returning the arrays of rows and columns created by the above.

The template for the component is then as below

<table>
  <caption><%= caption %></caption>
  <thead>
    <% if columns.any?%>
      <tr>
        <% columns.each do |col| %>
          <th scope="col" class="<%= 'numeric' if col.numeric? %>"><%= col.label_text %></th>
        <% end %>
      </tr>
    <%end%>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <% if rows.any?%>
      <% rows.each do |row| %>
        <% if columns.any?%>
          <tr>
            <% columns.each do |col| %>
              <% if col.header? %>
                <th scope="row"><%= col.cell(object: row.object).formatted_value %></th>
              <% else %>
                <td class="<%= 'numeric' if col.numeric? %>"><%= col.cell(object: row.object).formatted_value %></td>
              <%end%>
            <% end %>
          </tr>
        <%end%>
      <% end %>
    <%end%>
  </tbody>
</table>

@markstanley-nps thanks for the follow-up! @andrewmcodes might find this relevant ❤️