Fun table maker for Dart language

Tabulate is a Dart library for making beautiful nested tables in the terminal.

Table of Contents

• Description
• Styling Options
  • Style Inheritance Model
  • Word Wrapping
  • Text Alignment
  • Font Styles
  • Cell Colors

Description

tabulate help those who want to create beautiful and high customizable tables in the terminal easily.

NOTE Tabulate supports Dart >=2.17.5.

For quick start just create a Table object and call Table.addRows to add rows to your table and enjoy it.

import 'package:tabulate/tabulate.dart';

void main() {
  Table table = Table();
  table.addRow(["No.", "Full Name", "Position", "Salary"]);
  table.addRow(["1", "Bill Gates", "Founder Microsoft", "\$1000"]);
  table.addRow(["2", "Steve Jobs", "Founder Apple", "\$1200"]);
  table.addRow(["3", "Larry Page", "Founder Google", "\$1100"]);
  table.addRow(["4", "Mark Zuckerberg", "Founder Facebook", "\$1300"]);
}

You can style a table by using the Table.theme getter which returns a TableTheme object then you are able to change properties of the table, e.g., borders, text styles, colors etc.

  table.theme
    .setBorderColor(Color.red)
.setFontColor(Color.cyan);

You can access rows in the table using Table[rowIndex] or Table.rowAt(rowIndex). This will return a Row object on which you can similarly use getter Row.theme to stylize properties of all the cells in that row.

Now, let's stylize the header of the table. The code below will change font color of the cells to blue, aligns row content to center, applies font style to bold, changes border top character to = and add padding to the bottom and top of the row content.

   table[0].theme
    .setFontColor(Color.blue)
    .setTextAlign(TextAlign.center)
    .setFontStyle({FontStyle.bold})
    .setBorderTop("=")
    .setPaddingTop(1)
    .setPaddingBottom(1);

Also you can access columns in the table by using Table.columnAt(columnIndex). This will return a Column object which you can use the getter Column.theme to stylize properties all of the cells of the column.

   table.columnAt(0).theme
    .setTextAlign(TextAlign.center);

By the above code you can see that all of the cells in first column is aligned to center.

Now what about to change properties of specific cell in specific row or column?

You can easily stylizing use Dart index operators to access specific cell from a row by using Table[rowIndex][colIndex] or from a column by using Table.columnAt(colIndex)[cellIndex].

We want to change properties of cell Founder FaceBook in index row 4 and column 2. So just use table[4][2] to change font color to grey with font background red and font style crossed.

NOTE To access this cell by column we use table.columnAt(2)[4].

   table[4][2].theme
    .setFontColor(Color.grey)
    .setFontBackground(Color.red)
    .setFontStyle({FontStyle.crossed});

tabulate is using Dart StringBuffer class for render tables. There is two ways of render tables one way is StringBuffer another way is just using Dart built-in print function to print the Table object.

print using StringBuffer:

   StringBuffer stringBuffer = StringBuffer();
   table.render(stringBuffer);
   print(stringBuffer);

NOTE 1 tabulate use TermColor class for stylizing and colorizing fonts. In this class there is an property called isAnsiColorDisabled this property will globally disables or enables ANSI escapes. When environment doesn't support ANSI escapes default is set to true and ANSI escapes will not added into the table!. But can be overridden to force ANSI escapes adds to the table.

NOTE 2 some IDEs default is set to true but they support ANSI escapes so you have to manually set the TermColor.isAnsiColorDisabled to false.

Final result will be:

Styling Options

Style Inheritance Model

Styling in tabulate follows a simple style-inheritance model. When rendering each cell:

1. Apply cell styling if specified
2. If no cell styling is specified, apply its parent row styling
3. If no row styling is specified, apply its parent table styling
4. If no table styling is specified, apply the default table styling

This enables overriding the styling for a particular cell even though row or table styling is specified, e.g., when an entire row is colored yellow but you want a specific cell to be colored red.

NOTE Currently we don't support style-inheritance for nested tables. e.g, when we add Table object to another Table by using Table.addRow method, target table won't apply it's parent table style.

Word Wrapping

tabulate supports automatic word-wrapping when printing cells.

Although word-wrapping is automatic, there is a simple override. Automatic word-wrapping is used only if the cell contents do not have any embedded newline \n characters. So, you can embed newline characters in the cell contents and enforce the word-wrapping manually.

import 'package:tabulate/tabulate.dart';

void main() {
  Table table = Table();

  table.addRow([
    "This paragraph contains a veryveryveryveryveryverylong word. The long word will "
        "break and word wrap to the next line.",
    "This paragraph \nhas embedded '\\n' \ncharacters and\n will break\n exactly "
        "where\n you want it\n to\n break."
  ]);

  table[0][0].theme.setWidth(20);
  table[0][1].theme.setWidth(20);

  print(table);
}

• The above table has 1 row and 2 columns.
• The first cell has automatic word-wrapping.
• The second cell uses the embedded newline characters in the cell contents - even though the second column has plenty of space (50 characters width), it uses user-provided newline characters to break into new lines and enforce the cell style.
• NOTE: Whether word-wrapping is automatic or not, tabulate performs a trim operation on each line of each cell to remove whitespace characters from either side of line.

NOTE Currently word-wrapping have some problems with font styles and colors because wrapping ANSI doesn't implemented on wrapping algorithm.

Text Alignment

tabulate supports text alignment. Supported alignments are left, right and center. Changing cells alignment is possible with method .theme.setTextAlign(alignment).

NOTE: Default text alignment is left.

import 'package:tabulate/tabulate.dart';

void main() {
  TermColor.isAnsiColorDisabled = false;
  Table productTable = Table();

  productTable.addRow(["#", "Product Name", "Qty", "Price"]);

  productTable.addRow(["1", "TV", "4", "45,000"]);
  productTable.addRow(["2", "Mobile", "35", "32,000"]);
  productTable.addRow(["3", "Laptop", "12", "90,000"]);
  productTable.addRow(["4", "Keyboard", "3", "3,300"]);
  productTable.addRow(["5", "Shing Mach", "1", "18,500"]);

  productTable.columnAt(0).theme.setTextAlign(TextAlign.center);
  productTable.columnAt(3).theme.setWidth(15).setTextAlign(TextAlign.right);
  productTable.columnAt(2).theme.setWidth(8).setTextAlign(TextAlign.center);

  print(productTable);
}

The above code aligns columns # and Qty to center and column Price to right.

Font Styles

tabulate supports many font styles such as bold, dark, italic, underline, blink, reverse, concealed and crossed.

For setting font styles you should use method .theme.setFontStyle(fontstyles). This method input type is Set<FontStyle> because you might need to apply some font styles combinations like bold and italic.

NOTE: Depending on environment maybe some of the above font styles won't work perfectly.

By the way in applying font style on cells we also use style inheritance model and merge font styles in parents with cells font style. e.g, you globally set table font style to bold and apply crossed font style to specific cells, you have cells with bold and crossed style.

import 'package:tabulate/tabulate.dart';

void main() {
  TermColor.isAnsiColorDisabled = false;

  Table styledTable = Table();
  styledTable.addRow(["Bold", "Italic", "Bold & Italic", "Blinking"]);
  styledTable.addRow(["Underline", "Crossed", "Dark", "Bold, Italic & Underlined"]);

  styledTable[0][0].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.bold});

  styledTable[0][1].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.italic});

  styledTable[0][2].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.bold, FontStyle.italic});

  styledTable[0][3].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.blink});

  styledTable[1][0].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.underline});

  styledTable[1][1].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.crossed});

  styledTable[1][2].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.dark});

  styledTable[1][3].theme.setFontStyle({FontStyle.bold, FontStyle.italic, FontStyle.underline});

  print(styledTable);
}

Cell Colors

There are a number of methods in the TableTheme object to color cells - foreground and background - for font, borders, corners, and column separators. Thanks to termcolor, tabulate supports 16 colors: grey, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, brightRed, brightGreen, brightCyan, brightMagenta, brightBlue, brightYellow, brightGrey and brightWhite. The look of these colors vary depending on your terminal.

For font, border, and corners, you can call .theme.set<element>Color(value) to set the foreground color and .theme.set<element>Background(value) to set the background color. Here's an example:

import 'package:tabulate/tabulate.dart';

void main() {
  TermColor.isAnsiColorDisabled = false;

  List<MapEntry<String, Color>> colors = [
    MapEntry("Grey", Color.grey),
    MapEntry("Red", Color.red),
    MapEntry("Green", Color.green),
    MapEntry("Yellow", Color.yellow),
    MapEntry("Blue", Color.blue),
    MapEntry("Magenta", Color.magenta),
    MapEntry("Cyan", Color.cyan),
    MapEntry("White", Color.white),
  ];
  List<MapEntry<String, Color>> brightColors = [
    MapEntry("Bright Grey", Color.brightGrey),
    MapEntry("Bright Red", Color.brightRed),
    MapEntry("Bright Green", Color.brightGreen),
    MapEntry("Bright Yellow", Color.brightYellow),
    MapEntry("Bright Blue", Color.brightBlue),
    MapEntry("Bright Magenta", Color.brightMagenta),
    MapEntry("Bright Cyan", Color.brightCyan),
    MapEntry("Bright White", Color.brightWhite),
  ];

  Table colorPalette = Table();

  colorPalette.addRow(colors.map((e) => e.key).toList());
  colorPalette.addRow(List.filled(colors.length, " "));
  colorPalette.addRow(brightColors.map((e) => e.key).toList());
  colorPalette.addRow(List.filled(brightColors.length, " "));

  colorPalette.theme
      .setBackground(Color.brightWhite)
      .setTextAlign(TextAlign.center)
      .setCorner("-")
      .setColor(Color.blue)
      .setWidth(9);

  colorPalette.rowAt(0).theme.setFontColor(Color.grey);
  colorPalette.rowAt(2).theme.setFontColor(Color.grey);

  for (int colorIndex = 0; colorIndex < 8; colorIndex++) {
    colorPalette[1][colorIndex].theme.setFontBackground(colors[colorIndex].value).setHeight(3);
    colorPalette[3][colorIndex].theme.setFontBackground(brightColors[colorIndex].value).setHeight(3);
  }

  Table colorsTable = Table();
  colorsTable.theme
      .setTextAlign(TextAlign.center)
      .setFontStyle({FontStyle.bold})
      .setColor(Color.brightWhite)
      .setFontBackground(Color.magenta);

  colorsTable.addRow(["Color Palette"]);
  colorsTable.addRow([colorPalette]);
  colorsTable.addRow(["Dart tabulate made with ❤ by Mhwmd."]);
  colorsTable.rowAt(2).theme.setFontBackground(Color.grey).setTextAlign(TextAlign.right).hideBorderBottom();

  print("$colorsTable");
}