How can I create table using ASCII in a console?
I would like to organize information like this:
The information is organized with cells, whereas with System.out.println the information would be very disorganized.
You can use System.out.format() or System.out.printf() (printf internally simply invokes format so both methods give same results).
Below you will find example which will align text to left and fill unused places with spaces. Aligning String to left can be achieved with %-15s, which means:
-
%reserve (placeholder) -
15"places" for characters -
sof String data-type -
-and start printing them from left.
If you want to handle digits use d suffix like %-4d for max 4 digit numbers that should be placed at left side of column.
BTW printf doesn't add automatically line separators after printed data, so if we want to move cursor to next line we need to do it ourselves. We can use \r or \n, or let Formatter generate OS dependent line separator (like for Windows \r\n) with %n (note: this "placeholder" doesn't require any data as arguments, Java will provide correct sequence based on OS).
You can find more info about supported syntax at documentation of Formatter class.
String leftAlignFormat = "| %-15s | %-4d |%n";
System.out.format("+-----------------+------+%n");
System.out.format("| Column name | ID |%n");
System.out.format("+-----------------+------+%n");
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
System.out.format(leftAlignFormat, "some data" + i, i * i);
}
System.out.format("+-----------------+------+%n");
output
+-----------------+------+
| Column name | ID |
+-----------------+------+
| some data0 | 0 |
| some data1 | 1 |
| some data2 | 4 |
| some data3 | 9 |
| some data4 | 16 |
+-----------------+------+
Try this alternative: asciitable.
It offers several implementations of a text table, originally using ASCII and UTF-8 characters for borders.
Here is a sample table:
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Table Heading │
├──────────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────────────┬─────────────────┤
│ first row (col1) │ with some │ and more │ even more │
│ │ information │ information │ │
├──────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ second row │ with some │ and more │ even more │
│ (col1) │ information │ information │ │
│ │ (col2) │ (col3) │ │
└──────────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────┘
Find the latest version: http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/de.vandermeer/asciitable
See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39806611/363573
My class I created specifically for doing this is completely dynamic: https://github.com/2xsaiko/crogamp/blob/master/src/com/github/mrebhan/crogamp/cli/TableList.java
You can use it like this:
TableList tl = new TableList(3, "ID", "String 1", "String 2").sortBy(0).withUnicode(true);
// from a list
yourListOrWhatever.forEach(element -> tl.addRow(element.getID(), element.getS1(), element.getS2()));
// or manually
tl.addRow("Hi", "I am", "Bob");
tl.print();
It will look like this with unicode chars (note: will look better in console since all chars are equally wide):
┌─────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Command │ Description │ Syntax │
┢━━━━━━━━━╈━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╈━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┪
┃ bye ┃ Quits the application. ┃ ┃
┃ ga ┃ Adds the specified game. ┃ <id> <description> <path> ┃
┃ gl ┃ Lists all currently added games ┃ [pattern] ┃
┃ gr ┃ Rebuilds the files of the currently active game. ┃ ┃
┃ gs ┃ Selects the specified game. ┃ <id> ┃
┃ help ┃ Lists all available commands. ┃ [pattern] ┃
┃ license ┃ Displays licensing info. ┃ ┃
┃ ma ┃ Adds a mod to the currently active game. ┃ <id> <file> ┃
┃ md ┃ Deletes the specified mod and removes all associated files. ┃ <id> ┃
┃ me ┃ Toggles if the selected mod is active. ┃ <id> ┃
┃ ml ┃ Lists all mods for the currently active game. ┃ [pattern] ┃
┃ mm ┃ Moves the specified mod to the specified position in the priority list. ┃ <id> <position> ┃
┃ top kek ┃ Test command. Do not use, may cause death and/or destruction ┃ ┃
┃ ucode ┃ Toggles advanced unicode. (Enhanced characters) ┃ [on|true|yes|off|false|no] ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
And with unicode chars off (omit the .withUnicode(true)):
Command | Description | Syntax
--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------
bye | Quits the application. |
ga | Adds the specified game. | <id> <description> <path>
gl | Lists all currently added games | [pattern]
gr | Rebuilds the files of the currently active game. |
gs | Selects the specified game. | <id>
help | Lists all available commands. | [pattern]
license | Displays licensing info. |
ma | Adds a mod to the currently active game. | <id> <file>
md | Deletes the specified mod and removes all associated files. | <id>
me | Toggles if the selected mod is active. | <id>
ml | Lists all mods for the currently active game. | [pattern]
mm | Moves the specified mod to the specified position in the priority list. | <id> <position>
top kek | Test command. Do not use, may cause death and/or destruction |
ucode | Toggles advanced unicode. (Enhanced characters) | [on|true|yes|off|false|no]
use System.out.printf()
For example,
String s = //Any string
System.out.printf(%10s, s);
will print out the contents of String s, taking up exactly 10 characters. So if you want a table, just make sure each cell in the table is printed out to the same length. Also notice that printf() doesn't print a new line, so you'll have to print it yourself.