NAME

Text::Table::More - Generate text table with simple interface and many options

VERSION

This document describes version 0.025 of Text::Table::More (from Perl distribution Text-Table-More), released on 2022-03-27.

SYNOPSIS

 #!perl
 
 use 5.010001;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 
 use Text::Table::More qw/generate_table/;
 
 my $rows = [
     # header row
     ["Year",
      "Comedy",
      "Drama",
      "Variety",
      "Lead Comedy Actor",
      "Lead Drama Actor",
      "Lead Comedy Actress",
      "Lead Drama Actress"],
 
     # first data row
     [1962,
      "The Bob Newhart Show (NBC)",
      {text=>"The Defenders (CBS)", rowspan=>3}, # each cell can be hashref to specify text (content) as well as attributes
      "The Garry Moore Show (CBS)",
      {text=>"E. G. Marshall, The Defenders (CBS)", rowspan=>2, colspan=>2},
      {text=>"Shirley Booth, Hazel (NBC)", rowspan=>2, colspan=>2}],
 
     # second data row
     [1963,
      {text=>"The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)", rowspan=>2},
      "The Andy Williams Show (NBC)"],
 
     # third data row
     [1964,
      "The Danny Kaye Show (CBS)",
      {text=>"Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)", colspan=>2},
      {text=>"Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)", colspan=>2}],
 
     # fourth data row
     [1965,
      {text=>"four winners (Outstanding Program Achievements in Entertainment)", colspan=>3},
      {text=>"five winners (Outstanding Program Achievements in Entertainment)", colspan=>4}],
 
     # fifth data row
     [1966,
      "The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)",
      "The Fugitive (ABC)",
      "The Andy Williams Show (NBC)",
      "Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)",
      "Bill Cosby, I Spy (CBS)",
      "Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)",
      "Barbara Stanwyck, The Big Valley (CBS)"],
 ];
 
 binmode STDOUT, "utf8";
 print generate_table(
     rows => $rows,      # required
     header_row => 1,    # optional, default 0
     separate_rows => 1, # optional, default 0
     border_style => $ARGV[0] // 'ASCII::SingleLineDoubleAfterHeader', # optional, this is module name in BorderStyle::* namespace, without the prefix
     #align => 'left',   # optional, default 'left'. can be left/middle/right.
     #valign => 'top',   # optional, default 'top'. can be top/middle/bottom.
     #color => 1,        # optional, default 0. turn on support for cell content that contain ANSI color codes.
     #wide_char => 1,    # optional, default 0. turn on support for wide Unicode characters.
 
     row_attrs => [      # optional, specify per-row attributes
         # rownum (0-based int), attributes (hashref)
         [0, {align=>'middle', bottom_border=>1}],
     ],
 
     col_attrs => [      # optional, per-column attributes
         # colnum (0-based int), attributes (hashref)
         [2, {valign=>'middle'}],
     ],
 
     #cell_attrs => [    # optional, per-cell attributes
     #    # rownum (0-based int), colnum (0-based int), attributes (hashref)
     #    [1, 2, {rowspan=>3}],
     #    [1, 4, {rowspan=>2, colspan=>2}],
     #    [1, 5, {rowspan=>2, colspan=>2}],
     #    [2, 1, {rowspan=>2}],
     #    [3, 2, {colspan=>2}],
     #    [3, 3, {colspan=>2}],
     #    [4, 1, {colspan=>3}],
     #    [4, 2, {colspan=>4}],
     #],
 
 );

will output something like:

 .------+------------------------------+----------------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+-------------------------+------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------.
 | Year |            Comedy            |        Drama         |           Variety            |              Lead Comedy Actor              |    Lead Drama Actor     |              Lead Comedy Actress               |           Lead Drama Actress           |
 +======+==============================+======================+==============================+=============================================+=========================+================================================+========================================+
 | 1962 | The Bob Newhart Show (NBC)   |                      | The Garry Moore Show (CBS)   | E. G. Marshall, The Defenders (CBS)                                   | Shirley Booth, Hazel (NBC)                                                              |
 +------+------------------------------+                      +------------------------------+                                                                       |                                                                                         |
 | 1963 | The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) | The Defenders (CBS)  | The Andy Williams Show (NBC) |                                                                       |                                                                                         |
 +------+                              |                      +------------------------------+---------------------------------------------|-------------------------+------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------+
 | 1964 |                              |                      | The Danny Kaye Show (CBS)    | Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)                           | Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)                                          |
 +------+------------------------------+----------------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------|-------------------------+------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------+
 | 1965 | four winners (Outstanding Program Achievements in Entertainment)                   | five winners (Outstanding Program Achievements in Entertainment)                                                                                                |
 +------+------------------------------+----------------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+-------------------------+------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
 | 1966 | The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) | The Fugitive (ABC)   | The Andy Williams Show (NBC) | Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) | Bill Cosby, I Spy (CBS) | Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) | Barbara Stanwyck, The Big Valley (CBS) |
 `------+------------------------------+----------------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+-------------------------+------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------'

If you set the "border_style" argument to "UTF8::SingleLineBoldHeader":

 print generate_table(
     rows => $rows,
     border_style => "UTF8::SingleLineBoldHeader",
     ...
 );

then the output will be something like:

 ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
 ┃ Year ┃            Comedy            ┃        Drama         ┃           Variety            ┃              Lead Comedy Actor              ┃    Lead Drama Actor     ┃              Lead Comedy Actress               ┃           Lead Drama Actress           ┃
 ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
 │ 1962 │ The Bob Newhart Show (NBC)   │                      │ The Garry Moore Show (CBS)   │ E. G. Marshall, The Defenders (CBS)                                   │ Shirley Booth, Hazel (NBC)                                                              │
 ├──────┼──────────────────────────────┤                      ├──────────────────────────────┤                                                                       │                                                                                         │
 │ 1963 │ The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) │ The Defenders (CBS)  │ The Andy Williams Show (NBC) │                                                                       │                                                                                         │
 ├──────┤                              │                      ├──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────│─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────│────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 1964 │                              │                      │ The Danny Kaye Show (CBS)    │ Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)                           │ Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)                                          │
 ├──────┼──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────│─────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────│────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 1965 │ four winners (Outstanding Program Achievements in Entertainment)                   │ five winners (Outstanding Program Achievements in Entertainment)                                                                                                │
 ├──────┼──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ 1966 │ The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) │ The Fugitive (ABC)   │ The Andy Williams Show (NBC) │ Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) │ Bill Cosby, I Spy (CBS) │ Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS) │ Barbara Stanwyck, The Big Valley (CBS) │
 └──────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘

DESCRIPTION

Text::Table::More is yet another text table rendering module. This module uses the simple interface of Text::Table::Tiny with support for more formatting options like column/row spans, border style, per-row/column/cell align/valign/pad/vpad/hpad, and so on. At the time of this writing, Text::Table::More is the only text table module on CPAN that supports rowspans/colspans.

Keywords: rowspan, colspan.

DECLARED FEATURES

Features declared by this module:

From feature set PerlTrove

Features from feature set PerlTrove declared by this module:

Development Status
Value: "4 - Beta".
Environment
Value: "Console".
Intended Audience
Value: ["Developers"].
License
Value: "OSI Approved :: Artistic License".
Programming Language
Value: "Perl".
Topic
Value: ["Software Development :: Libraries :: Perl Modules","Utilities"].

From feature set TextTable

Features from feature set TextTable declared by this module:

can_align_cell_containing_color_code
Value: yes.
can_align_cell_containing_newline
Value: yes.
can_align_cell_containing_wide_character
Value: yes.
can_color
Can produce colored table.

Value: no.
can_color_theme
Allow choosing colors from a named set of palettes.

Value: no.
can_colspan
Value: yes.
can_customize_border
Let user customize border character in some way, e.g. selecting from several available borders, disable border.

Value: yes.
can_halign
Provide a way for user to specify horizontal alignment (left/middle/right) of cells.

Value: yes.
can_halign_individual_cell
Provide a way for user to specify different horizontal alignment (left/middle/right) for individual cells.

Value: yes.
can_halign_individual_column
Provide a way for user to specify different horizontal alignment (left/middle/right) for individual columns.

Value: yes.
can_halign_individual_row
Provide a way for user to specify different horizontal alignment (left/middle/right) for individual rows.

Value: yes.
can_hpad
Provide a way for user to specify horizontal padding of cells.

Value: yes.
can_hpad_individual_cell
Provide a way for user to specify different horizontal padding of individual cells.

Value: yes.
can_hpad_individual_column
Provide a way for user to specify different horizontal padding of individual columns.

Value: yes.
can_hpad_individual_row
Provide a way for user to specify different horizontal padding of individual rows.

Value: yes.
can_rowspan
Value: yes.
can_set_cell_height
Allow setting height of rows.

Value: no.
can_set_cell_height_of_individual_row
Allow setting height of individual rows.

Value: no.
can_set_cell_width
Allow setting height of rows.

Value: no.
can_set_cell_width_of_individual_column
Allow setting height of individual rows.

Value: no.
can_use_box_character
Can use terminal box-drawing character when drawing border.

Value: yes.
can_valign
Provide a way for user to specify vertical alignment (top/middle/bottom) of cells.

Value: yes.
can_valign_individual_cell
Provide a way for user to specify different vertical alignment (top/middle/bottom) for individual cells.

Value: yes.
can_valign_individual_column
Provide a way for user to specify different vertical alignment (top/middle/bottom) for individual columns.

Value: yes.
can_valign_individual_row
Provide a way for user to specify different vertical alignment (top/middle/bottom) for individual rows.

Value: yes.
can_vpad
Provide a way for user to specify vertical padding of cells.

Value: yes.
can_vpad_individual_cell
Provide a way for user to specify different vertical padding of individual cells.

Value: yes.
can_vpad_individual_column
Provide a way for user to specify different vertical padding of individual columns.

Value: yes.
can_vpad_individual_row
Provide a way for user to specify different vertical padding of individual rows.

Value: yes.
speed
Subjective speed rating, relative to other text table modules.

Value: "slow".

For more details on module features, see Module::Features.

PER-ROW ATTRIBUTES

align
String. Value is either "left", "middle", "right". Specify text alignment of cells. Override table argument, but is overridden by per-column or per-cell attribute of the same name.
valign
String. Value is either "top", "middle", "bottom". Specify vertical text alignment of cells. Override table argument, but is overridden by per-column or per-cell attribute of the same name.
bottom_border
Boolean.
top_border
Boolean.
lpad
Integer.
rpad
Integer.
hpad
Integer.
tpad
Integer.
bpad
Integer.
vpad
Integer.

PER-COLUMN ATTRIBUTES

align
String. Value is either "left", "middle", "right". Specify text alignment of cells. Override table argument and per-row attribute of the same name, but is overridden by per-cell attribute of the same name.
valign
String. Value is either "top", "middle", "bottom". Specify vertical text alignment of cells. Override table argument and per-row attribute of the same name, but is overridden by per-cell attribute of the same name.
lpad
Integer.
rpad
Integer.
hpad
Integer.
tpad
Integer.
bpad
Integer.
vpad
Integer.

PER-CELL ATTRIBUTES

align
String. Value is either "left", "middle", "right". Override table argument, per-row attribute, and per-column attribute of the same name.
valign
String. Value is either "top", "middle", "bottom". Specify vertical text alignment of cells. Override table argument, per-row attribute, and per-column attribute of the same name.
colspan
Positive integer. Default 1.
rowspan
Positive integer. Default 1.
bottom_border.
Boolean. Currently the attribute of he leftmost cell is used.
top_border.
Boolean. Currently the attribute of he leftmost cell is used.
lpad
Integer.
rpad
Integer.
hpad
Integer.
tpad
Integer.
bpad
Integer.
vpad
Integer.
pad_char
String.

FUNCTIONS

generate_table

Usage:

 my $table_str = generate_table(%args);

Arguments:

rows
Array of arrayrefs (of strings or hashrefs). Required. Each array element is a row of cells. A cell can be a string like "foo" specifying only the text (equivalent to "{text=>"foo"}") or a hashref which allows you to specify a cell's text ("text") as well as attributes like "rowspan" (int, >= 1), "colspan" (int, >= 1), etc. See "PER-CELL ATTRIBUTES" for the list of known per-cell attributes.

Currently, "top_border" and "bottom_border" needs to be specified for the first column of a row and will take effect for the whole row.

Alternatively, you can also specify cell attributes using "cell_attrs" argument.
header_row
Int. Optional. Default 0. Number of rows that are header. Note that in Text::Table::Tiny, this option is a boolean. We use integer to support multirow header.
border_style
Str. Optional. Uses default from the environment variable "PERL_TEXT_TABLE_MORE_BORDER_STYLE", or environment variable "BORDER_STYLE", or "ASCII::SingleLineDoubleAfterHeader". This is Perl module under the BorderStyle namespace, without the namespace prefix. To see how a border style looks like, you can use the CLI show-border-style from App::BorderStyleUtils.
align
String. Value is either "left", "middle", "right". Specify horizontal text alignment of cells. Overriden by overridden by per-row, per-column, or per-cell attribute of the same name.
valign
String. Value is either "top", "middle", "bottom". Specify vertical text alignment of cells. Overriden by overridden by per-row, per-column, or per-cell attribute of the same name.
row_attrs
Array of records. Optional. Specify per-row attributes. Each record is a 2-element arrayref: "[$row_idx, \%attrs]". $row_idx is zero-based. See "PER-ROW ATTRIBUTES" for the list of known attributes.
col_attrs
Array of records. Optional. Specify per-column attributes. Each record is a 2-element arrayref: "[$col_idx, \%attrs]". $col_idx is zero-based. See "PER-COLUMN ATTRIBUTES" for the list of known attributes.
cell_attrs
Array of records. Optional. Specify per-cell attributes. Each record is a 3-element arrayref: "[$row_idx, $col_idx, \%attrs]". $row_idx and $col_idx are zero-based. See "PER-CELL ATTRIBUTES" for the list of known attributes.

Alternatively, you can specify a cell's attribute in the "rows" argument directly, by specifying a cell as hashref.
lpad
Integer. Optional. Set number of padding characters to add at the left side of table cells. Overrides "hpad". Overridden by per-row/per-column/per-cell padding attributes. See also "rpad".
rpad
Integer. Optional. Set number of padding characters to add at the right side of table cells. Overrides "hpad". Overridden by per-row/per-column/per-cell padding attributes. See also "rpad".
hpad
Integer. Optional. Set number of padding characters to add at the left and right sides of table cells. Overridden by "lpad" for left side, and "rpad" for right side. Overridden by per-row/per-column/per-cell padding attributes. See also "vpad".

Default is 1.
tpad
Integer. Optional. Set number of padding lines to add at the top side of table cells. Overrides "vpad". Overridden by per-row/per-column/per-cell padding attributes. See also "bpad".
bpad
Integer. Optional. Set number of padding lines to add at the bottom side of table cells. Overrides "vpad". Overridden by per-row/per-column/per-cell padding attributes. See also "tpad".
vpad
Integer. Optional. Set number of padding lines to add at the top and bottom sides of table cells. Overridden by "tpad" for top side, and "bpad" for bottom side. Overridden by per-row/per-column/per-cell padding attributes. See also "hpad".

Default is 0.
pad_char
String. Optional. Must be one character long. Default is " " (space character).
separate_rows
Boolean. Optional. Default 0. If set to true, will add a separator between data rows. Equivalent to setting "bottom_border" or "top_border" attribute to true for each row.
wide_char
Boolean. Optional. Default false. Turn on wide character support. Cells that contain wide Unicode characters will still be properly aligned. Note that this requires optional prereq Text::WideChar::Util or Text::ANSI::WideUtil.
color
Boolean. Optional. Default false. Turn on color support. Cells that contain ANSI color codes will still be properly aligned. Note that this requires optional prereq Text::ANSI::Util or Text::ANSI::WideUtil.

FAQ

Can I have multiple header rows?

Yes, by setting "header_row" option to 2 or whatever number of header rows you have. See example script multirow-header.pl in this distribution.

ENVIRONMENT

PERL_TEXT_TABLE_MORE_BORDER_STYLE

String. Used to set the default for the "border_style" option. Has higher precedence than "BORDER_STYLE".

BORDER_STYLE

String. Used to set the default for the "border_style" option. Has lower precedence than "PERL_TEXT_TABLE_MORE_BORDER_STYLE".

HOMEPAGE

Please visit the project's homepage at <https://metacpan.org/release/Text-Table-More>.

SOURCE

Source repository is at <https://github.com/perlancar/perl-Text-Table-More>.

AUTHOR

perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>

CONTRIBUTING

To contribute, you can send patches by email/via RT, or send pull requests on GitHub.

Most of the time, you don't need to build the distribution yourself. You can simply modify the code, then test via:

 % prove -l

If you want to build the distribution (e.g. to try to install it locally on your system), you can install Dist::Zilla, Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR, and sometimes one or two other Dist::Zilla plugin and/or Pod::Weaver::Plugin. Any additional steps required beyond that are considered a bug and can be reported to me.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website <https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Text-Table-More>

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.