TAPIr has been released to the public this afternoon and is ready to be put to use. TAPIr, developed initially for use in the Übercart project,
is a module that defines a Tables API for use in any Drupal module.
Tables defined by TAPIr are dynamic, meaning any field (TAPIr term for
a table column) can be turned on or off, repositioned, and renamed.
Furthermore, they are extensible, so third party modules can make
further fields available to a table. Best of all, the code is
lightweight and very easy to use.

TAPIr functions in much the
same way as the Forms API. Tables are defined in modules in builder
functions. The name of the builder function is passed to the function tapir_get_table
as the table's ID. TAPIr will then load the data necessary to construct
the table and present it according to the current configuration.

Using the TAPIr hook_table_settings,
module developers can further define the settings for their tables.
Tables included in the hook have settings pages automatically generated
for them, so site owners can configure the look of the table. The TAPIr
hook_table_alter allows other module developers to
extend other TAPIr defined tables with more fields, integrating the
extra fields with the settings page seamlessly. Combine TAPIr with the
Forms API to theme forms into configurable TAPIr tables.

To read
more about the module, head to the handbook at
http://www.ubercart.org/uberlearn/tapir. A full set of example
applications with downloadable code has also been prepared at
http://www.ubercart.org/uberlearn/tapir_learn_example. Find the latest
releases and issue tracker at http://drupal.org/project/tapir.

While
I don't expect this to take off immediately, we considered it
worthwhile enough to spend a few days preparing the module for our
project. I am sure that other module developers can find uses for this
functionality, and the community as a whole would benefit from a
central way to define and configure dynamic tables. So, put on your
thinking caps and figure out a way to make TAPIr work for you.