plaintable

Plaintable is a simple library to build plain text tables. It has a clear, Pythonic programming interface (API).

Some formatting attributes such as alignment, padding, and floating point precision can be customized.

Usage

>>> from plaintable import Table
>>> data = [
...     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...     [10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
...     ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],
...     [1.0, 2.0, 1.5, 4.25, 10.50],
... ]
>>> headline = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five']
>>> table = Table(data, headline)
>>> print(table)
one   two   three  four  five
----  ----  -----  ----  -----
1     2     3      4     5
10    11    12     13    14
a     b     c      d     e
1.00  2.00  1.50   4.25  10.50

Customise

The table layout can be customised by passing several keyword arguments to Table.__init__().

headline

A list of strings which will appear as column headers. This argument is optional.

Default: None

truncate

Tell plaintable to truncate columns which do not have any headline, see #8 for further information.

Default: True

align

You can specifiy the alignment of the table ('l', 'r', 'c').

Default: 'l'

padding

If you need a wider table you can increase the padding.

Default: 2

floatprec

Every float value is converted to str with this precision.

Default: 2

header_padding

Adds extra spaces around header fields.

Default: 0

datetimefs

Specifies the datetime formatstring. Any datetime object is converted to a string refering to this formatstring; see also here.

Default: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M

Incremental Construction

As of version 0.2, it is possible to incrementally construct a table. This is handy if one is reading each line from a CSV file, say, or a database connection.

>>> from plaintable import Table
>>> data = [
...     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...     [10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
...     ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],
...     [1.0, 2.0, 1.5, 4.25, 10.50],
... ]
>>> table = Table(headline=['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five'])
>>> for row in data:
...     table.append(row)
>>> print(table)
one   two   three  four  five
----  ----  -----  ----  -----
1     2     3      4     5
10    11    12     13    14
a     b     c      d     e
1.00  2.00  1.50   4.25  10.50

Existing tables can have data added to via append, extend, or insert operations, just like a Python list. In fact, since table data is stored as a list (in table.data), any manipulation operations you can perform on a list are possible, though only the most common ones are exposed as direct Table methods.

Table formatting is deferred until the moment a string representation of the table is requested, e.g. through str(table) or print(table). One consequence is that if you print a table, then add data and re-print, the column widths may grow as subsequent prints accomodate wider data elements.

Further Examples

>>> from plaintable import Table
>>> data = [
...    [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...    [10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
...    ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],
...    [1.0, 2.0, 1.5, 4.25, 10.50],
... ]
>>> headline = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five']
>>> table = Table(data, headline, align='r', padding=4, floatprec=4)
>>> print(table)
       one       two     three      four       five
    ------    ------    ------    ------    -------
         1         2         3         4          5
        10        11        12        13         14
         a         b         c         d          e
    1.0000    2.0000    1.5000    4.2500    10.5000

>>> from plaintable import Table
>>> data = [
...    [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...    [10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
...    ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],
...    [1.0, 2.0, 1.5, 4.25, 10.50],
... ]
>>> table = Table(data)
>>> print(table)
1     2     3     4     5
10    11    12    13    14
a     b     c     d     e
1.00  2.00  1.50  4.25  10.50

>>> from plaintable import Table
>>> data = [
...    [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...    [10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
...    ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],
...    [1.0, 2.0, 1.5, 4.25, 10.50],
... ]
>>> table = Table(data, padding=4)
>>> print(table)
1       2       3       4
10      11      12      13
a       b       c       d
1.00    2.00    1.50    4.25

>>> from plaintable import Table
>>> data = [
...    [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...    [10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
...    ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],
...    [1.0, 2.0, 1.5, 4.25, 10.50],
... ]
>>> table = Table(data, header_padding=4)
>>> print(table)
one          two          three          four
-----------  -----------  -------------  ------------
1            2            3              4
10           11           12             13
a            b            c              d
1.00         2.00         1.50           4.25