Aligning decimal points in HTML

Question

I have a table containing decimal numbers in one column. I\'m looking to align them in a manner similar to a word processor\'s \"decimal tab\" feature, so that all the poin

Answer 1

See this article by Krijn Hoetmer for your options and how to achieve this. The essence of this solution is to use CSS and JS to achieve this:

(function() {
  var currencies = /(\$|€|€)/;
  var leftWidth = 0, rightWidth = 0;
  for(var tableCounter = 0, tables = document.getElementsByTagName("table");
      tableCounter < tables.length; tableCounter++) {
    if(tables[tableCounter].className.indexOf("fix-align-char") != -1) {
      var fCols = [], leftPart, rightPart, parts;
      for(var i = 0, cols = tables[tableCounter].getElementsByTagName("col"); i < cols.length; i++) {
        if(cols[i].getAttribute("char")) {
          fCols[i] = cols[i].getAttribute("char");
        }
      }
      for(var i = 0, trs = tables[tableCounter].rows; i < trs.length; i++) {
        for(var j = 0, tds = trs[i].getElementsByTagName("td"); j < tds.length; j++) {
          if(fCols[j]) {
            if(tds[j].innerHTML.indexOf(fCols[j]) != -1) {
              parts = tds[j].innerHTML.split(fCols[j]);
              leftPart = parts.slice(0, parts.length -1).join(fCols[j]);
              leftPart = leftPart.replace(currencies, "$1");
              rightPart = fCols[j] + parts.pop();
              tds[j].innerHTML = "" + leftPart + "" + rightPart + "";
            } else {
              tds[j].innerHTML = tds[j].innerHTML.replace(currencies, "$1");
              tds[j].innerHTML = "" + tds[j].innerHTML + "";
            }
            tds[j].className = "char-align";
            var txt = document.createTextNode(tds[j].firstChild.offsetWidth);
            if(leftWidth < tds[j].firstChild.offsetWidth) {
              leftWidth = tds[j].firstChild.offsetWidth;
            }
            if(tds[j].childNodes[1]) {
              txt = document.createTextNode(tds[j].childNodes[1].offsetWidth);
              if(rightWidth < tds[j].childNodes[1].offsetWidth) {
                rightWidth = tds[j].childNodes[1].offsetWidth;
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
  // This is ugly and should be improved (amongst other parts of the code ;)
  var styleText = "\n" +
      "\n";
  document.body.innerHTML += styleText;
})();

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
  width: 600px;
}
th {
  padding: .5em;
  background: #eee;
  text-align: left;
}
td {
  padding: .5em;
}
#only-css td.char-align {
  width: 7em;
}
#only-css span.left {
  float: left;
  width: 4em;
  text-align: right;
}
#only-css span.currency {
  float: left;
  width: 2em;
  text-align: left;
}
#only-css span.right {
  float: right;
  width: 3em;
  text-align: left;
}

  

    

      
Number
      
Description
      
Costs
    
  
  

    

      
1
      
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
      

        
          $3
        
        ,99
      
    
    

      
2
      
Consectetuer adipiscing elit
      

        
          $13
        
        ,95
      
    
    

      
3
      
Pellentesque fringilla nisl ac mi
      

        
          $4
        
        
      
    
    

      
4
      
Aenean egestas gravida magna
      

        
          $123
        
        ,999