Hide 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

You need QGIS >= v2.16 for that.

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