PrettyTable
Installation
Install via pip:
python -m pip install -U prettytable
Install latest development version:
python -m pip install -U git+https://github.com/jazzband/prettytable
Or from requirements.txt:
-e git://github.com/jazzband/prettytable.git#egg=prettytable
Tutorial on how to use the PrettyTable API
Getting your data into (and out of) the table
Let's suppose you have a shiny new PrettyTable:
from prettytable import PrettyTable
x = PrettyTable()
and you want to put some data into it. You have a few options.
Row by row
You can add data one row at a time. To do this you can set the field names first using
the field_names attribute, and then add the rows one at a time using the add_row
method:
x.field_names = ["City name", "Area", "Population", "Annual Rainfall"]
x.add_row(["Adelaide", 1295, 1158259, 600.5])
x.add_row(["Brisbane", 5905, 1857594, 1146.4])
x.add_row(["Darwin", 112, 120900, 1714.7])
x.add_row(["Hobart", 1357, 205556, 619.5])
x.add_row(["Sydney", 2058, 4336374, 1214.8])
x.add_row(["Melbourne", 1566, 3806092, 646.9])
x.add_row(["Perth", 5386, 1554769, 869.4])
All rows at once
When you have a list of rows, you can add them in one go with add_rows:
x.field_names = ["City name", "Area", "Population", "Annual Rainfall"]
x.add_rows(
[
["Adelaide", 1295, 1158259, 600.5],
["Brisbane", 5905, 1857594, 1146.4],
["Darwin", 112, 120900, 1714.7],
["Hobart", 1357, 205556, 619.5],
["Sydney", 2058, 4336374, 1214.8],
["Melbourne", 1566, 3806092, 646.9],
["Perth", 5386, 1554769, 869.4],
]
)
Column by column
You can add data one column at a time as well. To do this you use the add_column
method, which takes two arguments - a string which is the name for the field the column
you are adding corresponds to, and a list or tuple which contains the column data:
x.add_column("City name",
["Adelaide","Brisbane","Darwin","Hobart","Sydney","Melbourne","Perth"])
x.add_column("Area", [1295, 5905, 112, 1357, 2058, 1566, 5386])
x.add_column("Population", [1158259, 1857594, 120900, 205556, 4336374, 3806092,
1554769])
x.add_column("Annual Rainfall",[600.5, 1146.4, 1714.7, 619.5, 1214.8, 646.9,
869.4])
Mixing and matching
If you really want to, you can even mix and match add_row and add_column and build
some of your table in one way and some of it in the other. Tables built this way are
kind of confusing for other people to read, though, so don't do this unless you have a
good reason.
Importing data from a CSV file
If you have your table data in a comma-separated values file (.csv), you can read this
data into a PrettyTable like this:
from prettytable import from_csv
with open("myfile.csv") as fp:
mytable = from_csv(fp)
Importing data from a database cursor
If you have your table data in a database which you can access using a library which
confirms to the Python DB-API (e.g. an SQLite database accessible using the sqlite
module), then you can build a PrettyTable using a cursor object, like this:
import sqlite3
from prettytable import from_db_cursor
connection = sqlite3.connect("mydb.db")
cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT field1, field2, field3 FROM my_table")
mytable = from_db_cursor(cursor)
Getting data out
There are three ways to get data out of a PrettyTable, in increasing order of
completeness:
The del_row method takes an integer index of a single row to delete.
The del_column method takes a field name of a single column to delete.
The clear_rows method takes no arguments and deletes all the rows in the table - but
keeps the field names as they were so you that you can repopulate it with the same
kind of data.
The clear method takes no arguments and deletes all rows and all field names. It's
not quite the same as creating a fresh table instance, though - style related
settings, discussed later, are maintained.
Displaying your table in ASCII form
PrettyTable's main goal is to let you print tables in an attractive ASCII form, like
this:
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| City name | Area | Population | Annual Rainfall |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| Adelaide | 1295 | 1158259 | 600.5 |
| Brisbane | 5905 | 1857594 | 1146.4 |
| Darwin | 112 | 120900 | 1714.7 |
| Hobart | 1357 | 205556 | 619.5 |
| Melbourne | 1566 | 3806092 | 646.9 |
| Perth | 5386 | 1554769 | 869.4 |
| Sydney | 2058 | 4336374 | 1214.8 |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
You can print tables like this to stdout or get string representations of them.
Printing
To print a table in ASCII form, you can just do this:
print(x)
The old x.printt() method from versions 0.5 and earlier has been removed.
To pass options changing the look of the table, use the get_string() method documented
below:
print(x.get_string())
Stringing
If you don't want to actually print your table in ASCII form but just get a string
containing what would be printed if you use print(x), you can use the get_string
method:
mystring = x.get_string()
This string is guaranteed to look exactly the same as what would be printed by doing
print(x). You can now do all the usual things you can do with a string, like write
your table to a file or insert it into a GUI.
Controlling which data gets displayed
If you like, you can restrict the output of print(x) or x.get_string to only the
fields or rows you like.
The fields argument to these methods takes a list of field names to be printed:
print(x.get_string(fields=["City name", "Population"]))
gives:
+-----------+------------+
| City name | Population |
+-----------+------------+
| Adelaide | 1158259 |
| Brisbane | 1857594 |
| Darwin | 120900 |
| Hobart | 205556 |
| Melbourne | 3806092 |
| Perth | 1554769 |
| Sydney | 4336374 |
+-----------+------------+
The start and end arguments take the index of the first and last row to print
respectively. Note that the indexing works like Python list slicing - to print the 2nd,
3rd and 4th rows of the table, set start to 1 (the first row is row 0, so the second
is row 1) and set end to 4 (the index of the 4th row, plus 1):
print(x.get_string(start=1, end=4))
prints:
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| City name | Area | Population | Annual Rainfall |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| Brisbane | 5905 | 1857594 | 1146.4 |
| Darwin | 112 | 120900 | 1714.7 |
| Hobart | 1357 | 205556 | 619.5 |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
Changing the alignment of columns
By default, all columns in a table are centre aligned.
All columns at once
You can change the alignment of all the columns in a table at once by assigning a one
character string to the align attribute. The allowed strings are "l", "r" and
"c" for left, right and centre alignment, respectively:
x.align = "r"
print(x)
gives:
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| City name | Area | Population | Annual Rainfall |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| Adelaide | 1295 | 1158259 | 600.5 |
| Brisbane | 5905 | 1857594 | 1146.4 |
| Darwin | 112 | 120900 | 1714.7 |
| Hobart | 1357 | 205556 | 619.5 |
| Melbourne | 1566 | 3806092 | 646.9 |
| Perth | 5386 | 1554769 | 869.4 |
| Sydney | 2058 | 4336374 | 1214.8 |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
One column at a time
You can also change the alignment of individual columns based on the corresponding field
name by treating the align attribute as if it were a dictionary.
x.align["City name"] = "l"
x.align["Area"] = "c"
x.align["Population"] = "r"
x.align["Annual Rainfall"] = "c"
print(x)
gives:
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| City name | Area | Population | Annual Rainfall |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| Adelaide | 1295 | 1158259 | 600.5 |
| Brisbane | 5905 | 1857594 | 1146.4 |
| Darwin | 112 | 120900 | 1714.7 |
| Hobart | 1357 | 205556 | 619.5 |
| Melbourne | 1566 | 3806092 | 646.9 |
| Perth | 5386 | 1554769 | 869.4 |
| Sydney | 2058 | 4336374 | 1214.8 |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
Sorting your table by a field
You can make sure that your ASCII tables are produced with the data sorted by one
particular field by giving get_string a sortby keyword argument, which must be a
string containing the name of one field.
For example, to print the example table we built earlier of Australian capital city
data, so that the most populated city comes last, we can do this:
print(x.get_string(sortby="Population"))
to get:
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| City name | Area | Population | Annual Rainfall |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
| Darwin | 112 | 120900 | 1714.7 |
| Hobart | 1357 | 205556 | 619.5 |
| Adelaide | 1295 | 1158259 | 600.5 |
| Perth | 5386 | 1554769 | 869.4 |
| Brisbane | 5905 | 1857594 | 1146.4 |
| Melbourne | 1566 | 3806092 | 646.9 |
| Sydney | 2058 | 4336374 | 1214.8 |
+-----------+------+------------+-----------------+
If we want the most populated city to come first, we can also give a
reversesort=True argument.
If you always want your tables to be sorted in a certain way, you can make the setting
long-term like this:
x.sortby = "Population"
print(x)
print(x)
print(x)
All three tables printed by this code will be sorted by population (you could do
x.reversesort = True as well, if you wanted). The behaviour will persist until you
turn it off:
x.sortby = None
If you want to specify a custom sorting function, you can use the sort_key keyword
argument. Pass this a function which accepts two lists of values and returns a negative
or positive value depending on whether the first list should appear before or after the
second one. If your table has n columns, each list will have n+1 elements. Each list
corresponds to one row of the table. The first element will be whatever data is in the
relevant row, in the column specified by the sort_by argument. The remaining n
elements are the data in each of the table's columns, in order, including a repeated
instance of the data in the sort_by column.
Changing the appearance of your table - the easy way
By default, PrettyTable produces ASCII tables that look like the ones used in SQL
database shells. But if can print them in a variety of other formats as well. If the
format you want to use is common, PrettyTable makes this easy for you to do using the
set_style method. If you want to produce an uncommon table, you'll have to do things
slightly harder (see later).
Setting a table style
You can set the style for your table using the set_style method before any calls to
print or get_string. Here's how to print a table in a format which works nicely with
Microsoft Word's "Convert to table" feature:
from prettytable import MSWORD_FRIENDLY
x.set_style(MSWORD_FRIENDLY)
print(x)
In addition to MSWORD_FRIENDLY there are currently two other in-built styles you can
use for your tables:
DEFAULT - The default look, used to undo any style changes you may have made
PLAIN_COLUMNS - A borderless style that works well with command line programs for
columnar data
MARKDOWN - A style that follows Markdown syntax
ORGMODE - A table style that fits Org mode syntax
DOUBLE_BORDER - A style that uses continuous double border lines for a fancier
display on terminal
Other styles are likely to appear in future releases.
Changing the appearance of your table - the hard way
If you want to display your table in a style other than one of the in-built styles
listed above, you'll have to set things up the hard way.
Don't worry, it's not really that hard!
Style options
PrettyTable has a number of style options which control various aspects of how tables
are displayed. You have the freedom to set each of these options individually to
whatever you prefer. The set_style method just does this automatically for you.
The options are these:
border - A boolean option (must be True or False). Controls whether or not a
border is drawn around the table.
header - A boolean option (must be True or False). Controls whether or not the
first row of the table is a header showing the names of all the fields.
hrules - Controls printing of horizontal rules after rows. Allowed values: FRAME,
HEADER, ALL, NONE - note that these are variables defined inside the
prettytable module so make sure you import them or use prettytable.FRAME etc.
vrules - Controls printing of vertical rules between columns. Allowed values:
FRAME, ALL, NONE.
int_format - A string which controls the way integer data is printed. This works
like: print("%d" % data)
float_format - A string which controls the way floating point data is printed. This
works like: print("%f" % data)
padding_width - Number of spaces on either side of column data (only used if left
and right paddings are None).
left_padding_width - Number of spaces on left hand side of column data.
right_padding_width - Number of spaces on right hand side of column data.
vertical_char - Single character string used to draw vertical lines. Default is |.
horizontal_char - Single character string used to draw horizontal lines. Default is
-.
junction_char - Single character string used to draw line junctions. Default is +.
top_junction_char - single character string used to draw top line junctions. Default
is junction_char.
bottom_junction_char - single character string used to draw bottom line junctions.
Default is junction_char.
right_junction_char - single character string used to draw right line junctions.
Default is junction_char.
left_junction_char - single character string used to draw left line junctions.
Default is junction_char.
top_right_junction_char - single character string used to draw top-right line
junctions. Default is junction_char.
top_left_junction_char - single character string used to draw top-left line
junctions. Default is junction_char.
bottom_right_junction_char - single character string used to draw bottom-right line
junctions. Default is junction_char
bottom_left_junction_char - single character string used to draw bottom-left line
junctions. Default is junction_char.
You can set the style options to your own settings in two ways:
Setting style options for the long term
If you want to print your table with a different style several times, you can set your
option for the long term just by changing the appropriate attributes. If you never want
your tables to have borders you can do this:
x.border = False
print(x)
print(x)
print(x)
Neither of the 3 tables printed by this will have borders, even if you do things like
add extra rows in between them. The lack of borders will last until you do:
x.border = True
to turn them on again. This sort of long-term setting is exactly how set_style works.
set_style just sets a bunch of attributes to pre-set values for you.
Note that if you know what style options you want at the moment you are creating your
table, you can specify them using keyword arguments to the constructor. For example, the
following two code blocks are equivalent:
x = PrettyTable()
x.border = False
x.header = False
x.padding_width = 5
x = PrettyTable(border=False, header=False, padding_width=5)
Changing style options just once
If you don't want to make long-term style changes by changing an attribute like in the
previous section, you can make changes that last for just one get_string by giving
those methods keyword arguments. To print two "normal" tables with one borderless table
between them, you could do this:
print(x)
print(x.get_string(border=False))
print(x)
Displaying your table in JSON
PrettyTable will also print your tables in JSON, as a list of fields and an array of
rows. Just like in ASCII form, you can actually get a string representation - just use
get_json_string().
Displaying your table in HTML form
PrettyTable will also print your tables in HTML form, as
form, you can actually get a string representation - just use get_html_string(). HTML
printing supports the fields, start, end, sortby and reversesort arguments in
exactly the same way as ASCII printing.
Styling HTML tables
By default, PrettyTable outputs HTML for "vanilla" tables. The HTML code is quite
simple. It looks like this:
City nameAreaPopulationAnnual Rainfall
Adelaide12951158259600.5Brisbane590518575941146.4...
If you like, you can ask PrettyTable to do its best to mimic the style options that your
table has set using inline CSS. This is done by giving a format=True keyword argument
to get_html_string method. Note that if you always want to print formatted HTML you
can do:
x.format = True
and the setting will persist until you turn it off.
Just like with ASCII tables, if you want to change the table's style for just one
get_html_string you can pass those methods keyword arguments - exactly like print
and get_string.
Setting HTML attributes
You can provide a dictionary of HTML attribute name/value pairs to the get_html_string
method using the attributes keyword argument. This lets you specify common HTML
attributes like name, id and class that can be used for linking to your tables or
customising their appearance using CSS. For example:
print(x.get_html_string(attributes={"name":"my_table", "class":"red_table"}))
will print:
City nameAreaPopulationAnnual Rainfall
... ... ...
Miscellaneous things
Copying a table
You can call the copy method on a PrettyTable object without arguments to return an
identical independent copy of the table.
If you want a copy of a PrettyTable object with just a subset of the rows, you can use
list slicing notation:
new_table = old_table[0:5]
Contributing
After editing files, use the Black linter to auto-format
changed lines.
python -m pip install black
black prettytable*.py