Render vars in columns

Question

I am using a BlockTable and colorize its colums depending on object values.

<apex:variable value="" var="column_1_color"/>

<apex:pageBlockTable value="{!objectList}" var="object">

    <apex:column>
        <apex:variable var="column_1_color"
            value="{!IF(object.Name="test","green","red")}"/>
        Name:
    </apex:column>

    <apex:column style="background-color:{!column_1_color}">
        {!object.Name}
    </apex:column>

</apex:pageBlockTable>

|Name: | xxx |<--red
|Name: | test |<--green

The var needs to render for each row,
but what if I need the var value before creating first |Name: | column?
Is there any tag that keeps me from using an empty column?

Like this: (does not work)

<apex:variable value="" var="column_1_color"/>

<apex:pageBlockTable value="{!objectList}" var="object">

    <apex:variable var="column_1_color"
        value="{!IF(object.Name="test","green","red")}"/>

    <apex:column style="background-color:{!column_1_color}">
        Name:
    </apex:column>

    <apex:column style="background-color:{!column_1_color}">
        {!object.Name}
    </apex:column>

</apex:pageBlockTable>

Answer 1

Your <apex:variable> doesn't need a <apex:column> for itself. It can be immediately after <apex:repeat> and it should work just fine.

In fact you can ditch it completely and directly use your condition (makes sense if it'd be used only once. If you need the conditional formatting in more than 1 place - leave it in variable).

<apex:column style="background-color:{!IF(object.Name="test","green","red")}">
    {!object.Name}
</apex:column>

Not sure if that answers your question...