A plain text tables generator

A C++ implementation of a plain text tables generator. The name Textable originates from the combination of two words Text and Table: Text + Table = Textable.

+---------+---------+---------+
| Column0 | Column1 | Column2 |
+---------+---------+---------+
|0        |1        |2        |
+---------+---------+---------+
|        0|        1|        2|
+---------+---------+---------+
|    0    |    1    |    2    |
+---------+---------+---------+

Overview

The process of the text table generation is simple and intuitive (see examples below). You create an instance of the Textable class and populate it with your data. You may add data in any order you want - Textable will handle it. The cell content should be specified along with the alignment. A table can be output to a character stream or converted to a string with Textable::toString() function.

Features

• An intuitive API to build tables and manage their data
• Ability to add not only string cell values, but values of any type (convertible to string),
• Optimized table cell values storage
• Text alignment support: Left, Right and Center
• Supports Unicode strings
• C++11 support

Installation

Basically there is installation required - just compile /src/textable.h(.cpp) in your project and use Textable class. Otherwise create and use a CMake generated installation package.

Integration with CMake projects

However, if you use CMake and want to integrate the library into your project you might want to install it first by invoking a CMake command from the build directory:

cmake --install . --prefix=<install_path>

Once the library is installed you can use it from in your project by adjusting the corresponding CMake script. For example:

[..]
find_package(textable REQUIRED)

add_executable(example main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(example textable)
[..]

Prerequisites

No special requirements except C++11 compliant compiler. The class is tested latest Ubuntu and Windows versions. For more details see the CI badges (AppVeyor CI and GitHub actions).

Unicode Strings

In order to properly handle Unicode content all input strings must be UTF-8 encoded. The client should set a proper locale too. For example: std::setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.utf8");.

Generated Table Examples

+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|      1      |      1.2       |   Cell text    |  0   |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|      0      |       1        |       2        | 1.1  |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|    first    |     second     |     third      | 2.2  |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|    Fünf     | Двадцать пять  |    Հայաստան    |      |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|             | A Single Value |                |      |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|    true     |     false      |                |      |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
| height: 1.8 |  price: 1.234  | length: 5.4321 |      |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+
|Left         |           Right|      Center    | four |
+-------------+----------------+----------------+------+

API Usage Examples:

To add a single row with three cells:

Textable textable;
textable.setCell(0, 0, Textable::Align::Left, 1);
textable.setCell(0, 1, Textable::Align::Right, 1.2);
textable.setCell(0, 2, Textable::Align::Center, "Cell text");

To add a single rows in one go:

Textable textable;
textable.setRow(0, Textable::Align::Center, std::vector<int>{ 0, 1, 2 });
textable.setRow(1, Textable::Align::Center, std::vector<std::string>{ "first", "second", "third" });
textable.setRow(2, Textable::Align::Center, 1, 2.2f, 3.3, "Five days");

To set a column values in one go

Textable textable;
textable.setColumn(3, Textable::Align::Left, std::vector<double>{ 0.0, 1.1, 2.2 });
textable.setColumn(4, Textable::Align::Left, std::vector<bool>{ true, false });
textable.setColumn(5, Textable::Align::Left, 11, 2.22, 3.0f, "Apple");

Usage of a custom type as a cell data

struct TableObject
{
    float m_price;
    std::string m_title;

    friend std::ostream &operator<<(std::ostream &os, const TableObject &table);
};

std::ostream &operator<<(std::ostream &os, const TableObject &table)
{
    os << table.m_title << table.m_price;
    return os;
}

[..]

Textable textable;
textable.setRow(0, Textable::Align::Center,
                std::vector<TableObject>{ {1.80f, "height: "}, {1.234f, "price: "}, {5.4321f, "length: "} });

Export a table

Textable textable;
textable.setCell(0, 0, Textable::Align::Center, 1);
textable.setCell(0, 1, Textable::Align::Center, 1.2);
textable.setCell(0, 2, Textable::Align::Center, "Cell text");

std::cout << textable;

Building and testing

There are unit tests provided for the Textable class. You can find them in the test/ directory. To run them you have to build and run the test application (ENABLE_TESTING CMake flag set to True). Please note that unit tests depend from GTest. Therefore it should be also present.

To build things you should invoke the following commands from the terminal, assuming that the compiler and the environment are already configured and you are in the source directory:

Linux (gcc + CMake)

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_TESTING=True -DTARGET_ARCH=x64
cmake --build . --config Release
ctest

In order to build a debug version use -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug parameter. To build library for 32-bit architecture use TARGET_ARCH=x86 option instead.

Windows

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=C:\build\googletest\build -DENABLE_TESTING=True -A x64
cmake --build . --config Release
ctest -C Release

To build library for 32-bit architecture use -A Win32 option instead.

By default the script is configured to build a shared library. In order to build a static one use BUILD_SHARED_LIBS flag set to False.