Kendo UI For Angular Data Grid And Angular Material: Have Your Cake And Eat It Too — Smashing Magazine

Data Tables Beyond the Basics

Building a data table that handles real-world volumes of information is more than rendering rows and columns. Users need to search, filter, group, and edit data without leaving the page, and the table itself has to stay readable and responsive as data loads in. Libraries like Angular Material Table cover basic rendering well, but common enterprise requirements—inline editing, export, virtualization—fall outside its scope.

The Kendo UI for Angular Data Grid targets that gap. It is a native Angular component that handles sorting, filtering, and grouping automatically, while adding features Material's table does not ship with: in-table CRUD, PDF and Excel export, virtualization, and frozen or sticky columns. It also supports complex layouts via detail templates, multi-column headers, and tree views.

What Kendo UI for Angular Includes

Kendo UI for Angular is a component library with more than 100 native Angular components. It covers charts, diagrams, schedulers, editors, date inputs, progress indicators, QR and bar codes, uploads, gauges, and conversational UI. All components share three built-in themes—standard, material, and bootstrap—plus a theme builder for custom styling.

Because the library is built around consistent UI and UX patterns, components require minimal configuration. The design and accessibility work is already done, so teams do not need deep expertise in either to produce an enterprise-grade interface. The breadth of components also means an application can rely on a single library rather than mixing several.

Where the Data Grid Fits

The Data Grid is designed for use cases that go beyond simple tables: KPI dashboards, CRMs, POS systems, financial reporting, and inventory management. It makes large datasets easier to work with by streamlining data modification and fetching. Its customizable, accessible UI handles the heavy lifting of visualizing complex data, and it supports live reload so new data appears without a manual refresh.

Angular Material Table's Limitations

Angular Material is widely adopted in Angular projects, thanks to its clean implementation of material design and its ease of integration. However, its table component focuses on presentation. Essential data-handling features people expect from a production grid—built-in editing, export, advanced row and column behavior—are not part of the package, which is where the Kendo UI Data Grid differentiates itself.

Where the Component Libraries Diverge

Comparing the Kendo UI for Angular Data Grid to the Angular Material Table means comparing a purpose-built data component to a primitive. Both can display rows of data, but the built-in data operations, editing workflows, and output capabilities are dramatically different. The gap shows up quickly once you need more than static rows.

Built-in Data Operations

Pagination in the Kendo UI Data Grid is largely declarative. Setting the grid’s pageable option to true and providing a pageSize is enough for the kendoGridBinding directive to handle paging automatically. The grid then adds a paginator and manages the data slicing. Extra customizations, like a pager template or a PagerInfoComponent to add information about the current page, are optional additions.

Angular Material requires more setup. You must explicitly place the mat-paginator component after the table, then either listen for its page event and implement the logic yourself, or assign the paginator to the table’s MatTableDataSource. Both approaches are far more manual than the grid’s built-in handling.

Sorting, filtering, and grouping follow the same pattern. The kendoGridBinding directive enables sorting across all columns with a single sortable flag set to true. With Material, you add the matSort directive to the table and the mat-sort-header directive to every column header you want to sort, plus wiring for the sort logic.

For filtering, the Data Grid’s filterable option adds filter inputs per column, supporting text, date, number, and boolean values, with ranges and comparisons for local or server-side data. Filters are customizable, with options for menus or pop-ups. Material requires manually adding an input field and authoring a custom filterPredicate function for the MatTableDataSource.

The grid’s groupable option adds drag-and-drop grouping by one or more fields, local or server-side. Grouped rows are expandable, collapsible, sortable, and customizable with templates and aggregates. The Material Table ships with no grouping feature, so you must build that from scratch.

Editing and Row Configuration

The Kendo UI Data Grid supports CRUD editing within the table using the kendoGridReactiveEditing directive for reactive forms or kendoGridTemplateEditing for template-driven forms. Each directive takes a callback that returns the form group. Editing can target individual rows, individual cells, or pop-up dialogs, and you can add deletion confirmations, custom input controls, and validation. Editor controls are not limited to text fields; date pickers, numeric text boxes, and checkboxes can appear in edit mode. Material has no API for in-table editing, leaving the implementation up to you.

On rows, the Data Grid offers single- and multi-row selection, checkbox-only selection, select-all, and cell-level selection. The rowSticky callback keeps rows pinned while scrolling. For complex data, a Detail Row Template embeds custom components within a row, useful for hierarchical or detailed records. Material has no formal row or cell selection support, and embedding custom components is awkward. Sticky rows are possible through CSS styling, though not a table feature.

Column configuration shows a similar split. The Data Grid can lock columns using the locked option, or make columns sticky with the sticky option. Columns can span multiple columns using the kendo-grid-span-column element. Templates for cell, header, and footer content are available, and multi-column headers group columns under a single header. Column resizing and reordering are supported. Material provides only sticky columns, via the sticky and stickyEnd directives.

Scrolling, Virtualization, and Output

The Data Grid offers both column virtualization and virtual row scrolling. Setting virtualColumns to true limits column rendering to the viewport, and setting the scrollable option to virtual does the same for rows. Material has no virtualization support at all.

For internationalization, the Data Grid leans on the Kendo UI for Angular Internationalization package, which loads multiple locale data sets and provides an Intl Service for date and number formatting and parsing, plus Intl Pipes for transforms. Right-to-left layout support is included. In Material, internationalization is limited to customizing the mat-paginator text; the table itself has no localization provisions.

Data can be exported directly from the grid to PDF or Excel. Adding a kendo-grid-pdf or kendo-grid-excel component and binding its export method to a button is the core setup. The PDF export supports page sizing, column dimensions, templates, multi-grid PDFs, external triggers, and custom fonts. The Excel export handles selected columns or data, workbook customization, external triggers, and asynchronous sources. Material offers no export support.

Accessibility coverage differs, too. The Data Grid claims conformance with the WAI-ARIA and Section 508 standards, with keyboard navigation and screen reader support. Material Table auto-assigns the role="table" attribute to all tables, but does not document compliance with a specific accessibility guideline or standard.

Why the Data Grid Fits Into an Angular Material Workflow

The Kendo UI for Angular Data Grid is designed to scale from straightforward data tables to complex, data-heavy applications. It ships with a Material theme, so it can sit naturally inside an app already built with Angular Material. The grid also ships alongside 100+ other Kendo UI components, which you can combine with it to address more specialized user requirements.

Although the Data Grid works with minimal setup, it exposes a broad set of configuration options for those who need finer control. The Kendo UI for Angular documentation is thorough, with guides, tutorials, and support documents available on the official site. You’ll also find demos, sample applications, and community support via forums, GitHub repositories, and Stack Overflow. That combination keeps the learning curve gentle.

Adopting the Data Grid saves engineering time that would otherwise go into building and maintaining a custom grid UI. It works out of the box, so teams can direct their effort toward business-critical features rather than table mechanics. Over time, this approach tends to be more cost-effective than building from scratch, since it avoids recurring maintenance and specialized debugging effort.

Summary

The Kendo UI for Angular Data Grid is a full-featured table component for visualizing large datasets. It manages pagination, sorting, filtering, and grouping automatically. Its rows and columns are highly customizable, with support for virtualization and globalization. The grid meets multiple accessibility standards and provides PDF and Excel export options. For teams migrating from Angular Material Table, the grid’s Material theme offers a visually consistent path forward. Full API details are available in the official Kendo UI for Angular documentation.