Adding more than two columng group headers in jqgrid

Another and easy way of increasing any number of levels(dimensions) in Jqgrid is by adding setGroupHeaders that number of times

If my columns are like, ColNames = ['Id','Date', 'Client', 'Amount','Tax','Total','Notes'];

Now add setGroupHeaders Like

jQuery("#list").jqGrid('setGroupHeaders', {
          useColSpanStyle: true, 
          groupHeaders:[
            {startColumnName: 'id', numberOfColumns: 1, titleText: '.'},
            {startColumnName: 'date', numberOfColumns: 8, titleText: 'Nice'},
            ]   
        });
        jQuery("#list").jqGrid('setGroupHeaders', {
          useColSpanStyle: true, 
          groupHeaders:[
            {startColumnName: 'id', numberOfColumns: 1, titleText: '.'},
            {startColumnName: 'date', numberOfColumns: 4, titleText: 'rice'},
            {startColumnName: 'total', numberOfColumns: 2, titleText: 'dice'}
            ]   
        });

        jQuery("#list").jqGrid('setGroupHeaders', {
          useColSpanStyle: true, 
          groupHeaders:[
            {startColumnName: 'id', numberOfColumns: 1, titleText: '.'},
            {startColumnName: 'date', numberOfColumns: 2, titleText: 'Price'},
            {startColumnName: 'amount', numberOfColumns: 2, titleText: 'Shiping'},
            {startColumnName: 'total', numberOfColumns: 2, titleText: 'bipping'}
            ]   
        });

Following is the output

| .  |                       Nice                              |
----------------------------------------------------------------
| .  |                 rice                |       dice        |
----------------------------------------------------------------    
| .  |       Price     |      Shipping     |       bipping     | 
----------------------------------------------------------------    
| id |  Date  | Client |  Amount   |  Tax  | Total  |  Notes   |   

The reason of restriction of one level of group headers in jqGrid exist because jqGrid provide more as just displaying the headers. You can see on the example of the demo created for the answer that the column headers after grouping are clickable (to sort by the column) and resizable (by drag&drop on the separator between column headers). If you use titleText option of setGroupHeaders you can include HTML fragments, inclusive <table> element, in the column header. It gives you the possibility to display milti-level headers. One can include resizable: false to deny resizing or one can write which custom resizeStop handler which resizes columns in the table added by titleText option of setGroupHeaders.

All what I described above sound theoretical. So I wrote the small demo which demonstrates the approach. It displays the following grid

The demo is written not for the common case, but it's clear that one can use it as basis to more common solution. In any way I hope that you can change it to any your multi-level grid.

The most important parts of the demo you will find below:

var grid = $("#list"),
    setHeaderWidth = function () {
        var $self = $(this),
            colModel = $self.jqGrid("getGridParam", "colModel"),
            cmByName = {},
            ths = this.grid.headers, // array with column headers
            cm,
            i,
            l = colModel.length;

        // save width of every column header in cmByName map
        // to make easy access there by name
        for (i = 0; i < l; i++) {
            cm = colModel[i];
            cmByName[cm.name] = $(ths[i].el).outerWidth();
        }
        // resize headers of additional columns based on the size of
        // the columns below the header
        $("#h1").width(cmByName.amount + cmByName.tax + cmByName.total - 1);
        $("#h2").width(cmByName.closed + cmByName.ship_via - 1);
    };

grid.jqGrid({
    ...
    colModel: [
        {name: "id", width: 65, align: "center", sorttype: "int", hidden: true},
        {name: "invdate", width: 80, align: "center", sorttype: "date",
            formatter: "date", formatoptions: {newformat: "d-M-Y"}, datefmt: "d-M-Y"},
        {name: "name", width: 70},
        {name: "amount", width: 75, formatter: "number", sorttype: "number", align: "right"},
        {name: "tax", width: 55, formatter: "number", sorttype: "number", align: "right"},
        {name: "total", width: 65, formatter: "number", sorttype: "number", align: "right"},
        {name: "closed", width: 75, align: "center", formatter: "checkbox",
            edittype: "checkbox", editoptions: {value: "Yes:No", defaultValue: "Yes"}},
        {name: "ship_via", width: 100, align: "center", formatter: "select",
            edittype: "select", editoptions: {value: "FE:FedEx;TN:TNT;IN:Intim", defaultValue: "IN"}},
        {name: "note", width: 70, sortable: false}
    ],
    resizeStop: function () {
        // see http://stackoverflow.com/a/9599685/315935
        var $self = $(this),
            shrinkToFit = $self.jqGrid("getGridParam", "shrinkToFit");

        $self.jqGrid("setGridWidth", this.grid.newWidth, shrinkToFit);
        setHeaderWidth.call(this);
    }
});
grid.jqGrid ("navGrid", "#pager",
             {edit: false, add: false, del: false, refresh: true, view: false},
             {}, {}, {}, {multipleSearch: true, overlay: false});
grid.jqGrid("setGroupHeaders", {
    useColSpanStyle: true,
    groupHeaders: [{
        startColumnName: "amount",
        numberOfColumns: 5,
        titleText:
            '<table style="width:100%;border-spacing:0px;">' +
            '<tr><td id="h0" colspan="2"><em>Details</em></td></tr>' +
            '<tr>' +
                '<td id="h1">Price</td>' +
                '<td id="h2">Shiping</td>' +
            '</tr>' +
            '</table>'
    }]
});
$("th[title=DetailsPriceShiping]").removeAttr("title");
$("#h0").css({
    borderBottomWidth: "1px",
    borderBottomColor: "#c5dbec", // the color from jQuery UI which you use
    borderBottomStyle: "solid",
    padding: "4px 0 6px 0"
});
$("#h1").css({
    borderRightWidth: "1px",
    borderRightColor: "#c5dbec", // the color from jQuery UI which you use
    borderRightStyle: "solid",
    padding: "4px 0 4px 0"
});
$("#h2").css({
    padding: "4px 0 4px 0"
});
setHeaderWidth.call(grid[0]);

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