Global filter that also looks in the "original" object of the row

[danvirsen]

Hi!

I have a list of objects with a lot of keys. Many of them are not relevant to show as columns, but I still want to use them when applying the global filter to filter the table.

I have created my own function for filtering but this function is called once per column. Is it possible to register a filter function that gets called once per row instead, or is there another way to go about it that I'm not seeing in the documentation?

My solution for now is that I set enableGlobalFilter: false on all columns except one, so that my filter function only gets called once per row. This is really hacky so I'm hoping there's a proper way to achieve this.

[kokoc30]

In v8, globalFilterFn is still a per-column predicate. The filtered-row-model implementation tries it against eligible columns and stops at the first match; it isn't a separate once-per-row callback.

For a predicate over the entire original object, a supported alternative is to filter the input array yourself and enable manualFiltering. The filtering can still run in the browser—the important part is that the table receives already-filtered data.

Inside your React component, using your existing data and columns:

import { useMemo, useState } from 'react';
import { getCoreRowModel, useReactTable } from '@tanstack/react-table';

const [globalFilter, setGlobalFilter] = useState('');

const filteredData = useMemo(() => {
  const query = globalFilter.trim().toLowerCase();
  if (!query) return data;

  return data.filter((original) =>
    Object.values(original).some((value) =>
      String(value ?? '').toLowerCase().includes(query)
    )
  );
}, [data, globalFilter]);

const table = useReactTable({
  data: filteredData,
  columns,
  getCoreRowModel: getCoreRowModel(),
  manualFiltering: true,
  state: { globalFilter },
  onGlobalFilterChange: setGlobalFilter,
});

Your search input can keep calling table.setGlobalFilter(...). Each filtering pass now evaluates your predicate once per input row, independent of the number of displayed columns. Replace the Object.values(...).some(...) body with your existing whole-object predicate; this simple example handles top-level scalar values, so nested structures need explicit traversal or a search-text projection.

One tradeoff: manualFiltering: true bypasses built-in column filtering too. If you need that feature, your existing single eligible column is a valid way to stay in the built-in filtering pipeline; alternatively, implement both filters outside it. For row selection, also retain a stable getRowId based on your actual record ID, since pre-filtering changes array indices.

The manual filtering guide documents the already-filtered-data contract. It doesn't require the filtering computation to run on a server.