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 tables.

Install

npm:

npm install markdown-table

Use

Typical usage (defaults to align left):

var table = require('markdown-table')

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

Yields:

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

With align:

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 |

API

markdownTable(table[, options])

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

options

options.align

One style for all columns, or styles for their respective columns (string or Array.<string>). Each style is either 'l' (left), 'r' (right), or 'c' (center). Other values are treated as '', which doesn’t place the colon in the alignment row but does align left. Only the lowercased first character is used, so Right is fine.

options.padding

Whether to add a space of padding between delimiters and cells (boolean, default: true).

When true, there is padding:

| Alpha | B     |
| ----- | ----- |
| C     | Delta |

When false, there is no padding:

|Alpha|B    |
|-----|-----|
|C    |Delta|

options.delimiterStart

Whether to begin each row with the delimiter (boolean, default: true).

Note: please don’t use this: it could create fragile structures that aren’t understandable to some Markdown parsers.

When true, there are starting delimiters:

| Alpha | B     |
| ----- | ----- |
| C     | Delta |

When false, there are no starting delimiters:

Alpha | B     |
----- | ----- |
C     | Delta |

options.delimiterEnd

Whether to end each row with the delimiter (boolean, default: true).

Note: please don’t use this: it could create fragile structures that aren’t understandable to some Markdown parsers.

When true, there are ending delimiters:

| Alpha | B     |
| ----- | ----- |
| C     | Delta |

When false, there are no ending delimiters:

| Alpha | B
| ----- | -----
| C     | Delta

options.alignDelimiters

Whether to align the delimiters (boolean, default: true). By default, they are aligned:

| Alpha | B     |
| ----- | ----- |
| C     | Delta |

Pass false to make them staggered:

| Alpha | B |
| - | - |
| C | Delta |

options.stringLength

Method to detect the length of a cell (Function, default: s => s.length).

Full-width characters and ANSI-sequences all mess up delimiter alignment when viewing the Markdown source. To fix this, you have to pass in a stringLength option to detect the “visible” length of a cell (note that what is and isn’t visible depends on your editor).

Without such a function, the following:

table([
  ['Alpha', 'Bravo'],
  ['中文', 'Charlie'],
  ['👩‍❤️‍👩', 'Delta']
])

Yields:

| Alpha | Bravo |
| - | - |
| 中文 | Charlie |
| 👩‍❤️‍👩 | Delta |

With string-width:

var width = require('string-width')

table(
  [
    ['Alpha', 'Bravo'],
    ['中文', 'Charlie'],
    ['👩‍❤️‍👩', 'Delta']
  ],
  {stringLength: width}
)

Yields:

| Alpha | Bravo   |
| ----- | ------- |
| 中文  | Charlie |
| 👩‍❤️‍👩    | Delta   |

Inspiration

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

License

MIT © Titus Wormer