cli-table3

What is cli-table3?

The cli-table3 npm package is a utility for rendering Unicode-aided tables on the command line from your node.js scripts. It is a fork of the original cli-table package and provides additional features and bug fixes. It allows for easy table creation with customizable characters for the border and columns, as well as alignment and color options for the text within the cells.

What are cli-table3's main functionalities?

Basic Table Creation

This feature allows you to create a simple table with rows and columns. The code sample demonstrates how to instantiate a new table, add rows to it, and then print it to the console.

const Table = require('cli-table3');
const table = new Table();
table.push(
  ['First column', 'Second column'],
  ['First row', 'Second row']
);
console.log(table.toString());

Custom Table Styling

This feature allows for customization of the table's appearance. The code sample shows how to create a table with custom border characters and styles.

const Table = require('cli-table3');
const table = new Table({
  style: { head: [], border: [] },
  chars: {
    'top': '═', 'top-mid': '╤', 'top-left': '╔', 'top-right': '╗',
    'bottom': '═', 'bottom-mid': '╧', 'bottom-left': '╚', 'bottom-right': '╝',
    'left': '║', 'left-mid': '╟', 'mid': '─', 'mid-mid': '┼',
    'right': '║', 'right-mid': '╢', 'middle': '│'
  }
});
table.push(
  ['First column', 'Second column'],
  ['First row', 'Second row']
);
console.log(table.toString());

Column Width and Alignment

This feature allows you to specify the width and alignment of columns. The code sample demonstrates setting the width of each column and aligning the text within them.

const Table = require('cli-table3');
const table = new Table({
  colWidths: [20, 30],
  colAligns: ['left', 'right'],
});
table.push(
  ['Left aligned', 'Right aligned'],
  ['Longer text in the first column', 'Text in the second column']
);
console.log(table.toString());

Other packages similar to cli-table3

table

The 'table' package is another popular choice for creating text-based tables in Node.js. It provides automatic text wrapping, spanning cells, and alignment, and is highly customizable. Compared to cli-table3, it might offer a more modern API and additional features for complex table creation.

ascii-table

Ascii-table is a small and simple package for creating ASCII tables. It is less feature-rich than cli-table3 but is straightforward to use for basic table needs. It lacks some of the advanced styling and customization options available in cli-table3.

easy-table

Easy-table is a minimalistic package that allows for quick table generation with a focus on simplicity and performance. It doesn't have as many styling options as cli-table3 but can be a good choice for simple tabular data representation.

README

cli-table3

This utility allows you to render unicode-aided tables on the command line from your node.js scripts.

cli-table3 is based on (and api compatible with) the original cli-table, and cli-table2, which are both unmaintained. cli-table3 includes all the additional features from cli-table2.

Features not in the original cli-table

• Ability to make cells span columns and/or rows.
• Ability to set custom styles per cell (border characters/colors, padding, etc).
• Vertical alignment (top, bottom, center).
• Word wrapping options.
• More robust truncation of cell text that contains ansi color characters.
• Better handling of text color that spans multiple lines.
• API compatible with the original cli-table.
• Exhaustive test suite including the entire original cli-table test suite.
• Lots of examples auto-generated from the tests (basic, advanced).

Features

• Customizable characters that constitute the table.
• Color/background styling in the header through colors.js @colors/colors
• Column width customization
• Text truncation based on predefined widths
• Text alignment (left, right, center)
• Padding (left, right)
• Easy-to-use API

Installation

npm install cli-table3

How to use

A portion of the unit test suite is used to generate examples:

• basic-usage - covers basic uses.
• advanced - covers using the new column and row span features.

This package is api compatible with the original cli-table. So all the original documentation still applies (copied below).

Horizontal Tables

var Table = require('cli-table3');

// instantiate
var table = new Table({
    head: ['TH 1 label', 'TH 2 label']
  , colWidths: [100, 200]
});

// table is an Array, so you can `push`, `unshift`, `splice` and friends
table.push(
    ['First value', 'Second value']
  , ['First value', 'Second value']
);

console.log(table.toString());

Vertical Tables

var Table = require('cli-table3');
var table = new Table();

table.push(
    { 'Some key': 'Some value' }
  , { 'Another key': 'Another value' }
);

console.log(table.toString());

Cross Tables

Cross tables are very similar to vertical tables, with two key differences:

1. They require a head setting when instantiated that has an empty string as the first header
2. The individual rows take the general form of { "Header": ["Row", "Values"] }

var Table = require('cli-table3');
var table = new Table({ head: ["", "Top Header 1", "Top Header 2"] });

table.push(
    { 'Left Header 1': ['Value Row 1 Col 1', 'Value Row 1 Col 2'] }
  , { 'Left Header 2': ['Value Row 2 Col 1', 'Value Row 2 Col 2'] }
);

console.log(table.toString());

Custom styles

The chars property controls how the table is drawn:

var table = new Table({
  chars: { 'top': '═' , 'top-mid': '╤' , 'top-left': '╔' , 'top-right': '╗'
         , 'bottom': '═' , 'bottom-mid': '╧' , 'bottom-left': '╚' , 'bottom-right': '╝'
         , 'left': '║' , 'left-mid': '╟' , 'mid': '─' , 'mid-mid': '┼'
         , 'right': '║' , 'right-mid': '╢' , 'middle': '│' }
});

table.push(
    ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
  , ['frob', 'bar', 'quuz']
);

console.log(table.toString());
// Outputs:
//
//╔══════╤═════╤══════╗
//║ foo  │ bar │ baz  ║
//╟──────┼─────┼──────╢
//║ frob │ bar │ quuz ║
//╚══════╧═════╧══════╝

Empty decoration lines will be skipped, to avoid vertical separator rows just set the 'mid', 'left-mid', 'mid-mid', 'right-mid' to the empty string:

var table = new Table({ chars: {'mid': '', 'left-mid': '', 'mid-mid': '', 'right-mid': ''} });
table.push(
    ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
  , ['frobnicate', 'bar', 'quuz']
);

console.log(table.toString());
// Outputs: (note the lack of the horizontal line between rows)
//┌────────────┬─────┬──────┐
//│ foo        │ bar │ baz  │
//│ frobnicate │ bar │ quuz │
//└────────────┴─────┴──────┘

By setting all chars to empty with the exception of 'middle' being set to a single space and by setting padding to zero, it's possible to get the most compact layout with no decorations:

var table = new Table({
  chars: { 'top': '' , 'top-mid': '' , 'top-left': '' , 'top-right': ''
         , 'bottom': '' , 'bottom-mid': '' , 'bottom-left': '' , 'bottom-right': ''
         , 'left': '' , 'left-mid': '' , 'mid': '' , 'mid-mid': ''
         , 'right': '' , 'right-mid': '' , 'middle': ' ' },
  style: { 'padding-left': 0, 'padding-right': 0 }
});

table.push(
    ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
  , ['frobnicate', 'bar', 'quuz']
);

console.log(table.toString());
// Outputs:
//foo        bar baz
//frobnicate bar quuz

Debugging

Later versions of cli-table3 supporting debugging your table data.

Enable and use debugging:

var table = new Table({ debug: 1 });
table.push([{}, {},}); // etc.

console.log(table.toString());
table.messages.forEach((message) => console.log(message));

If you are rendering multiple tables with debugging on run Table.reset() after rendering each table.

Build Targets

Clone the repository and run yarn install to install all its submodules, then run one of the following commands:

Run the tests with coverage reports.

$ yarn test:coverage

Run the tests every time a file changes.

$ yarn test:watch

Update the documentation.

$ yarn docs

Credits

• James Talmage - author <[e-mail]> (jamestalmage)
• Guillermo Rauch - author of the original cli-table <[e-mail]> (Rauchg)

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2014 James Talmage <[e-mail]>

Original cli-table code/documentation: Copyright (c) 2010 LearnBoost <[e-mail]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Changelog

v0.6.3 (2022-09-15)

:rocket: Enhancement

• #303 Add ability to set/override wordWrap and wrapOnWordBoundary options per cell (@shazron)