java-console-table a ConsoleTable for Java

Copyright (c) John C Sinclair 2021

A ConsoleTable formats a table of rows and columns into a single String, which can be printed on the console with a monospaced font.

Example code:

ConsoleTable table = new ConsoleTable();
table.setHeaders("-City", "'Lat", "Longitude");
table.addRow("Paris", 48.86,2.34);
table.addRow("New York", 40.74, -73.99);
table.addRow("London", 51.52, -0.13);
table.addRow("Brisbane", -27.47, 153.03);
System.out.print(table);

System.out.print(table.withStyle(Styles.BASIC));

Console output:

┌──────────┬────────┬───────────┐
│ City     │   Lat  │ Longitude │
├──────────┼────────┼───────────┤
│ Paris    │  48.86 │      2.34 │
│ New York │  40.74 │    -73.99 │
│ London   │  51.52 │     -0.13 │
│ Brisbane │ -27.47 │    153.03 │
└──────────┴────────┴───────────┘
+----------+--------+-----------+
| City     |   Lat  | Longitude |
+----------+--------+-----------+
| Paris    |  48.86 |      2.34 |
| New York |  40.74 |    -73.99 |
| London   |  51.52 |     -0.13 |
| Brisbane | -27.47 |    153.03 |
+----------+--------+-----------+

Features

ConsoleTable makes it easy to build stylish tables, which can be printed into a single string with all formats preserved.

The core features are:

• Never have to work out the width of a column, ConsoleTable does it for you.
• Be forgiving of input data and handle nulls and missing columns.
• Display an optional header row.
• Display borders and lines with a predefined or user defined Style
• Uses the toString() method to print any Object
• Accepts table data as Object[][] or List<Object[]> or List<List<Object>>.
• Uses fluent style method chaining. Table.of(headers,data).withStyle(Styles.SQL)
• A column can be Aligned either LEFT, CENTRE or RIGHT.
• ColumnFormat defaults to RIGHT, you can set a column header to make it LEFT or CENTRE
• You can add a string Header, start with a - and it will be aligned LEFT, with a ' it will be CENTRE

Convert Object[][] to ConsoleTable

If you already have Object[][] data, you can print it on the console as a formatted table instantly:

ConsoleTable table = new ConsoleTable(data);
System.out.print(table);        // Note: table.toString() is called implicitly

Quick Start

• To get a quick demonstration, run ConsoleTable.java, the main() method prints out some samples.
• To find out what Styles are available, run Styles.java, the main() method prints a sample of each predefined Style.
• To display monospaced box-drawing characters in the Eclipse console, in Run | Run Configurations... , in the Common tab, set Encoding to Other UTF-8 or set the Project | Properties | Text File Encoding to UTF-8, so that it is inherited automatically by the Run Configurations.