A Text Table Writer/Printer for Python

Question

TL;DR -> Is there a table writing module on PyPi (I\'ve failed to find any) that takes in lists as parameters and makes a table out of those

Answer 1

I’m just going to throw a solution from me in which I’ve actually written last week just to test something out. It currently right-aligns everything but it would be simple enough to add some alignment parameters or something.

def printTable (tbl, borderHorizontal = '-', borderVertical = '|', borderCross = '+'):
    cols = [list(x) for x in zip(*tbl)]
    lengths = [max(map(len, map(str, col))) for col in cols]
    f = borderVertical + borderVertical.join(' {:>%d} ' % l for l in lengths) + borderVertical
    s = borderCross + borderCross.join(borderHorizontal * (l+2) for l in lengths) + borderCross

    print(s)
    for row in tbl:
        print(f.format(*row))
        print(s)

Example:

>>> x = [['Length', 'Time(ms)'], [0, 0], [250, 6], [500, 21], [750, 50], [1000, 87], [1250, 135], [1500, 196], [1750, 269], [2000, 351]]
>>> printTable(x)
+--------+----------+
| Length | Time(ms) |
+--------+----------+
|      0 |        0 |
+--------+----------+
|    250 |        6 |
+--------+----------+
|    500 |       21 |
+--------+----------+
|    750 |       50 |
+--------+----------+
|   1000 |       87 |
+--------+----------+
|   1250 |      135 |
+--------+----------+
|   1500 |      196 |
+--------+----------+
|   1750 |      269 |
+--------+----------+
|   2000 |      351 |
+--------+----------+

Answer 2

PrettyTable module is what you need:

PrettyTable is a simple Python library designed to make it quick and easy to represent tabular data in visually appealing ASCII tables.

>>> import prettytable
>>> x = prettytable.PrettyTable(["Length", "Time"])
>>> x.add_row([0, 0.00000])
>>> x.add_row([250, 0.00600]) 
>>> x.add_row([500, 0.02100]) 
>>> x.add_row([750, 0.04999])    
>>> print x
+--------+---------+
| Length |   Time  |
+--------+---------+
|   0    |   0.0   |
|  250   |  0.006  |
|  500   |  0.021  |
|  750   | 0.04999 |
+--------+---------+

Or, texttable:

texttable is a module to generate a formatted text table, using ASCII characters.

>>> import texttable
>>> x = texttable.Texttable()
>>> x.add_rows([["Length", "Time"], [0, 0.00000], [250, 0.00600], [500, 0.02100], [750, 0.04999]])
>>> print x.draw()
+--------+-------+
| Length | Time  |
+========+=======+
| 0      | 0     |
+--------+-------+
| 250    | 0.006 |
+--------+-------+
| 500    | 0.021 |
+--------+-------+
| 750    | 0.050 |
+--------+-------+

Also see relevant thread: How can I pretty-print ASCII tables with Python?