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

@cieplak's answer was great. I refined it a bit so that columns are sized independently

    print make_table( [      ['Name', 'Favorite Food', 'Favorite Subject'],
                             ['Joe', 'Hamburgrs', 'I like things with really long names'],
                             ['Jill', 'Salads', 'American Idol'],
                             ['Sally', 'Tofu', 'Math']])

    ===== ============= ==================================== 
    Name  Favorite Food Favorite Subject                     
    ===== ============= ==================================== 
    Joe   Hamburgrs     I like things with really long names 
    ----- ------------- ------------------------------------ 
    Jill  Salads        American Idol                        
    ----- ------------- ------------------------------------ 
    Sally Tofu          Math                                 
    ===== ============= ==================================== 

Here is the code

def make_table(grid):
    max_cols = [max(out) for out in map(list, zip(*[[len(item) for item in row] for row in grid]))]
    rst = table_div(max_cols, 1)

    for i, row in enumerate(grid):
        header_flag = False
        if i == 0 or i == len(grid)-1: header_flag = True
        rst += normalize_row(row,max_cols)
        rst += table_div(max_cols, header_flag )
    return rst

def table_div(max_cols, header_flag=1):
    out = ""
    if header_flag == 1:
        style = "="
    else:
        style = "-"

    for max_col in max_cols:
        out += max_col * style + " "

    out += "\n"
    return out


def normalize_row(row, max_cols):
    r = ""
    for i, max_col in enumerate(max_cols):
        r += row[i] + (max_col  - len(row[i]) + 1) * " "

    return r + "\n"