What are some approaches to outputting a Python data structure to reStructuredText

Question

I have a list of tuples in Python that I would like to output to a table in reStructuredText.

The docutils library has great support for converting reStructuredText

Answer 1

>> print make_table([['Name', 'Favorite Food', 'Favorite Subject'],
                     ['Joe', 'Hamburgers', 'Cars'],
                     ['Jill', 'Salads', 'American Idol'],
                     ['Sally', 'Tofu', 'Math']])

+------------------+------------------+------------------+
| Name             | Favorite Food    | Favorite Subject |
+==================+==================+==================+
| Joe              | Hamburgers       | Cars             |
+------------------+------------------+------------------+
| Jill             | Salads           | American Idol    |
+------------------+------------------+------------------+
| Sally            | Tofu             | Math             |
+------------------+------------------+------------------+

Here is the code I use for quick and dirty reStructuredText tables:

def make_table(grid):
    cell_width = 2 + max(reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [[len(item) for item in row] for row in grid], []))
    num_cols = len(grid[0])
    rst = table_div(num_cols, cell_width, 0)
    header_flag = 1
    for row in grid:
        rst = rst + '| ' + '| '.join([normalize_cell(x, cell_width-1) for x in row]) + '|\n'
        rst = rst + table_div(num_cols, cell_width, header_flag)
        header_flag = 0
    return rst

def table_div(num_cols, col_width, header_flag):
    if header_flag == 1:
        return num_cols*('+' + (col_width)*'=') + '+\n'
    else:
        return num_cols*('+' + (col_width)*'-') + '+\n'

def normalize_cell(string, length):
    return string + ((length - len(string)) * ' ')