/ 
Text-SpanningTable-0.1
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 4 total dependents
/ Text::SpanningTable

NAME

Text::SpanningTable - ASCII tables with support for column spanning.

VERSION

version 0.1

SYNOPSIS

use Text::SpanningTable;

# create a table object with four columns of varying widths
my $t = Text::SpanningTable->new(10, 20, 15, 25);

# enable auto-newline adding
$t->newlines(1);

# print a top border
print $t->hr('top');

# print a row (with header information)
print $t->row('Column 1', 'Column 2', 'Column 3', 'Column 4');

# print a double horizontal rule
print $t->dhr; # also $t->hr('dhr');

# print a row of data
print $t->row('one', 'two', 'three', 'four');

# print a horizontal rule
print $t->hr;

# print another row, with one column that spans all four columns
print $t->row([4, 'Creedance Clearwater Revival']);

# print a horizontal rule
print $t->hr;

# print a row with the first column normally and another column
# spanning the remaining three columns
print $t->row('normal', [3, 'spans three columns']);

# finally, print the bottom border
print $t->hr('bottom');

# the output from all these commands is:
.----------+------------------+-------------+-----------------------.
| Column 1 | Column 2         | Column 3    | Column 4              |
+==========+==================+=============+=======================+
| one      | two              | three       | four                  |
+----------+------------------+-------------+-----------------------+
| Creedance Clearwater Revival                                      |
+----------+------------------+-------------+-----------------------+
| normal   | spans three columns                                    |
'----------+------------------+-------------+-----------------------'

DESCRIPTION

Text::SpanningTable provides a mechanism for creating simple ASCII tables, with support for column spanning. It is meant to be used with monospace fonts such as common in terminals, and thus is useful for logging purposes.

This module is inspired by Text::SimpleTable and can generally produce the same output (except that Text::SimpleTable doesn't support column spanning), but with a few key differences:

  • In Text::SimpleTable, you build your table in the object and draw() it when you're done. In Text::SpanningTable, you can print your table (or do whatever you want with the output) as it is being built. If you don't need to have your tables in "real-time", you can just save the output in a variable, but for convenience and compatibility with Text::SimpleTable, this module provides a draw() method (which is actually an alias for the output() method) that returns the table's output.

  • Text::SimpleTable takes care of the top and bottom borders of the table by itself. Due to Text::SpanningTable's "real-time" nature, this functionality is not provided, and you have to take care of that yourself.

  • Text::SimpleTable allows you to pass titles for a header column when creating the table object. This module doesn't have that functionality, you have to create header rows (or footer rows) yourself and how you see fit.

  • Text::SpanningTable provides a second type of horizontal rules (called 'dhr' for 'double horizontal rule') that can be used for header and footer rows (or whatever you see fit).

  • Text::SpanningTable provides an option to define a callback function that can be automatically invoked on the module's output when calling row(), hr() or dhr().

  • In Text::SimpleTable, the widths you define for the columns are the widths of the data they can accommodate, i.e. without the borders and padding. In Text::SpanningTable, the widths you define are WITH the borders and padding. If you are familiar with the CSS and the box model, then columns in Text::SimpleTable have box-sizing set to content-box, while in Text::SpanningTable they have box-sizing set to border-box. So take into account that the width of the column's data will be four characters less than defined.

Like Text::SimpleTable, the columns of the table will always be exactly the same width as defined, i.e. they will not stretch to accommodate the data passed to the rows. If a column's data is too big, it will be wrapped (with possible word-breaking using the '-' character), thus resulting in more lines of text.

METHODS

new( [@column_widths] )

Creates a new instance of Text::SpanningTable with columns of the provided widths. If you don't provide any column widths, the table will have one column with a width of 100 characters.

newlines( [$boolean] )

By default, newlines will NOT be added automatically to the output generated by this module (for example, when printing a horizontal rule, a newline character will not be added). Pass a boolean value to this method to enable/disable automatic newline creation. Returns the current value of this attribute (after changing it if a boolean value has been passed).

exec( \&sub, [@args] )

Define a callback function to be invoked whenever calling row(), hr() or dhr(). This function will receive, as arguments, the generated output, and whatever else you've passed to this function (note @args above).

hr( ['top'|'middle'|'bottom'|'dhr'] )

Generates a horizontal rule of a certain type. Unless a specific type is provided, 'middle' we be used. 'top' generates a top border for the table, 'bottom' generates a bottom border, and 'dhr' is the same as 'middle', but generates a 'double horizontal rule' that is more pronounced and thus can be used for headers and footers.

This method will always result in one line of text.

dhr()

Convenience method that simply calls hr('dhr').

row( @column_data )

Generates a new row of data. The array passed should contain the same number of columns defined in the instance object, or, if column spanning is used, the total amount of columns should be the same as defined.

When a column doesn't span, simply pass a scalar. When it does span, pass an array-ref with two items, the first being the number of columns to span, and the second with the scalar data. Passing an array-ref with 1 for the first item is the same as just passing the scalar data (as the column will simply span itself).

So, for example, if the table has nine columns, the following is a valid value for @column_data:

( 'one', [2, 'two and three'], 'four', [5, 'five through nine'] )

If a column's data will be longer than its width, the data will wrapped and broken, which results in the row being constructed from more than one lines of text. Thus, as oppose to the hr() method, this method has two options for a return value. In list context, it will return all the lines constructing the row (with or without newlines at the end of each string, see newlines() for more info). In scalar context, however, it will return the row as a string containing newline characters that separate the lines of text (once again, a trailing newline will be added to this string only if a true value was passed to newlines()).

If a callback function has be defined, it will not be invoked with the complete output of this row (i.e. with all the lines of text that has resulted), but instead will be called once per each line of text. This is what makes the callback function so useful, as it helps you cope with problems resulting from all the newline characters separating these lines.

output()

draw()

Returns the entire output generated for the table up to the point of calling this method. It should be stressed that this method does not "finalize" the table by adding top and bottom borders or anything at all. Decoration is done "real-time" and if you don't add top and bottom borders yourself (with hr('top') and hr('bottom'), respectively), this method will not do that for you. Returned output will or will not contain newlines as per the value defined with newlines().

Both the above methods do the same, draw() is provided as an alias for compatibility with Text::SimpleTable.

AUTHOR

Ido Perlmuter, <ido at ido50.net>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-text-spanningtable at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Text-SpanningTable. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Text::SpanningTable

You can also look for information at:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sebastian Riedel and Marcus Ramberg, authors of Text::SimpleTable, which provided the inspiration of this module.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2010 Ido Perlmuter.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License.

See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.