markdown-table

What is markdown-table?

The markdown-table npm package is a utility for generating tables in Markdown format. It allows users to create well-formatted Markdown tables from arrays of data, providing options to customize alignment and padding.

What are markdown-table's main functionalities?

Basic Table Creation

This feature allows the creation of a basic Markdown table from an array of arrays. Each sub-array represents a row in the table.

const markdownTable = require('markdown-table');

const table = markdownTable([
  ['Branch', 'Commit'],
  ['master', '0123456789abcdef'],
  ['staging', 'fedcba9876543210']
]);

console.log(table);

Custom Alignment

This feature enables the specification of alignment for each column in the table. 'l' stands for left, 'c' for center, and 'r' for right.

const markdownTable = require('markdown-table');

const table = markdownTable(
  [
    ['Feature', 'Support'],
    ['Tables', 'Yes'],
    ['Alignment', 'Yes']
  ],
  { align: ['l', 'c'] }
);

console.log(table);

Other packages similar to markdown-table

table

The 'table' package also allows for the creation of text-based tables, which can be used in Markdown. It offers more extensive customization options such as border styles and cell content wrapping, making it more versatile than markdown-table for complex table layouts.

cli-table3

Similar to 'table', cli-table3 is designed for creating Unicode-aided tables in the command line interface but can also be used to generate Markdown-compatible tables. It provides additional features like custom header styles and column width control, offering more detailed customization compared to markdown-table.

README

markdown-table

Generate fancy Markdown/ASCII tables.

Installation

npm:

npm install markdown-table

Usage

Dependencies:

var table = require('markdown-table');

Normal usage (defaults to left-alignment):

table([
  ['Branch', 'Commit'],
  ['master', '0123456789abcdef'],
  ['staging', 'fedcba9876543210']
]);

Yields:

| Branch  | Commit           |
| ------- | ---------------- |
| master  | 0123456789abcdef |
| staging | fedcba9876543210 |

With alignment:

table([
  ['Beep', 'No.', 'Boop'],
  ['beep', '1024', 'xyz'],
  ['boop', '3388450', 'tuv'],
  ['foo', '10106', 'qrstuv'],
  ['bar', '45', 'lmno']
], {
  align: ['l', 'c', 'r']
});

Yields:

| Beep |   No.   |   Boop |
| :--- | :-----: | -----: |
| beep |   1024  |    xyz |
| boop | 3388450 |    tuv |
| foo  |  10106  | qrstuv |
| bar  |    45   |   lmno |

Alignment on dots:

table([
  ['No.'],
  ['0.1.2'],
  ['11.22.33'],
  ['5.6.'],
  ['1.22222'],
], {
  align: '.'
});

Yields:

|    No.      |
| :---------: |
|   0.1.2     |
| 11.22.33    |
|   5.6.      |
|     1.22222 |

API

markdownTable(table[, options])

Turns a given matrix of strings (an array of arrays of strings) into a table.

options

The following options are available:

• options.align (string or Array.<string>) — One style for all columns, or styles for their respective columns. Each style is either 'l' (left), 'r' (right), 'c' (centre), or '.' (dot). Other values are treated as '', which doesn’t place the colon but does left align. Only the lowercased first character is used, so Right is fine;
• options.delimiter (string, default: ' | ') — Value to insert between cells. Careful, setting this to a non-pipe breaks GitHub Flavoured Markdown;
• options.start (string, default: '| ') — Value to insert at the beginning of every row.
• options.end (string, default: ' |') — Value to insert at the end of every row.
• options.rule (boolean, default: true) — Whether to display a rule between the header and the body of the table. Careful, will break GitHub Flavoured Markdown when false;
• options.stringLength (Function, default: s => s.length) — Method to detect the length of a cell (see below).
• options.pad (boolean, default: true) — Whether to pad the markdown for table cells to make them the same width. Setting this to false will cause the table rows to remain staggered.

stringLength(cell)

ANSI-sequences mess up tables on terminals. To fix this, you have to pass in a stringLength option to detect the “visible” length of a cell.

var chalk = require('chalk');

function stringLength(cell) {
  return chalk.stripColor(cell).length;
}

Inspiration

The original idea and basic implementation was inspired by James Halliday’s text-table library.

License

MIT © Titus Wormer