Hide columns in bootstrap table at startup

You can use data-visible="false":

<thead>
    <tr>
        <th data-field="customer.name" data-align="center" data-sortable="true">customer</th>
        <th data-field="type" data-align="center" data-sortable="true" data-visible="false">type</th>
        <th data-field="description" data-align="center" data-sortable="true">description</th>
        <th data-field="cutter" data-align="center" data-sortable="true" data-visible="false">cutter</th>
        <th data-field="valid_s" data-align="center" data-sortable="true" data-visible="false">valid</th>
    </tr>
</thead>

You could do that in your javascript using hideColumn inside the ready function:

$(function(){
    var $table = $('#mytable');

    $table.bootstrapTable('hideColumn', 'type');
    $table.bootstrapTable('hideColumn', 'cutter');
    $table.bootstrapTable('hideColumn', 'valid_s');
});

Then if you want to show them you could use:

$(function(){
    var $table = $('#mytable');

    $table.bootstrapTable('showColumn', 'type');
    $table.bootstrapTable('showColumn', 'cutter');
    $table.bootstrapTable('showColumn', 'valid_s');
});

None of the answers above worked for me, because they deleted the column from the DOM -- but I had to keep it in the DOM. I only wanted to hide the column.

The following solutions worked to keep the column hidden but in the DOM:

Bootstrap-Table: How to hide a column without deleting it from the DOM?

ex. using the data-class attribute on the TH, and then defining it to be hidden:

<th class="col-xs-1" data-class='hidden' data-field="stargazers_count">Stars</th>

.hidden{
  display:none;
  visibility:hidden;
}

Or another option is to hide the TD/TH manually in jQuery after Bootstrap-Table's onPostBody().

You need to add the last line

<table id="mytable"  data-row-style="rowStyle" class="table table-hover" id="table-pagination " 
       data-url="labels.json" 
       data-toggle="table"
       data-pagination="true"
       data-show-pagination-switch="true"
       data-sort-order="desc" 
       data-search="true"
       data-show-refresh="true" 
       data-show-columns="true"
       data-page-list="[10, 25, 50, 100, ALL]"  
       showPaginationSwitch="false"        
       >