Formatting Data for Tabular Output

In Python, representing data in tabular format can be a challenge for beginners. This article provides an overview of several easy-to-implement solutions.

The Problem

Suppose you have a list containing two headings and a matrix representing table data, such as:

teams_list = ["Man Utd", "Man City", "T Hotspur"]
data = np.array([[1, 2, 1],
                 [0, 1, 0],
                 [2, 4, 2]])

The desired output is a table with the heading names as columns and the matrix values as rows:

Solutions

1. tabulate

Tabulate provides a simple way to format data into tables:

from tabulate import tabulate
print(tabulate([['Man Utd', 1, 0, 0],
                   ['Man City', 1, 1, 0],
                   ['T Hotspur', 0, 1, 2]], headers=teams_list))

2. PrettyTable

PrettyTable offers more customization options:

from prettytable import PrettyTable
t = PrettyTable(['']   teams_list)
t.add_rows([[name]   list(row) for name, row in zip(teams_list, data)])
print(t)

3. texttable

Texttable provides fine-grained control over table appearance:

from texttable import Texttable
t = Texttable()
t.add_headers(teams_list)
t.add_rows(data)
print(t.draw())

4. termtables

Termtables offers additional styling options:

import termtables as tt
print(tt.to_string([['']   teams_list]   [[name]   list(row) for name, row in zip(teams_list, data)],
                  >

Additional Options

• terminaltables: Supports multi-line rows.
• asciitable: Reads and writes various ASCII table formats.

By utilizing these solutions, you can easily present tabular data in Python with minimal effort.