Hey coders, long time no speak?

Today I want to share with you a quick little tutorial in making nice looking tables (pretty much the same style of table that you see in a MySQL cli output).

What I am trying to achieve here is this:

<a href="https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/2012/08/15/python-make-tables-that-look-readable-in-the-command-line/prettytable/" rel="attachment wp-att-2196"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2196" title="prettyTable" src="https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/prettyTable.jpg" alt="" width="415" height="194" /></a>

To implement this we use the plugin “PrettyTable”, which is available from: http://code.google.com/p/prettytable/

Installation:

Just for reference, I am using Python2.6 on CentOS.

To install, download the latest copy from code.google ^ Link is above.

Example:

# cd ~/; wget http://prettytable.googlecode.com/files/prettytable-0.6.tar.gz

Then untar and move into the directory:

# tar zxvf prettytable-0.6.tar.gz; cd prettytable-0.6

Install that plugin!

# python2.6 setup.py install

If that command throws up an error like :

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “setup.py”, line 2, in <module>
from setuptools import setup
ImportError: No module named setuptools

To overcome this you just need to install setuptools, like so:

# yum install python26-setuptools

Now run that setup command again (python2.6 setup.py install) and you should be ready to pretty your outputs.

Using the plugin:

Okay so to use this plugin in it’s basic form is pretty simple, go create a python script:

# vim myFancyScript.py

Now because you compiled and installed with Python2.6 you need to ensure you bashenv interpreter is set correctly! – At the top of the file we have open place this:

#!/usr/bin/python26

Note: ensure you have the # (pound) in this line.

Now you’re ready to import the module and do fancy stuff, import it as shown by adding the following lines to your file:

from prettytable import PrettyTable

You now have prettyTables ready to use, in the file lets create a table and add some data, first we declare pretty table and put the column headings in, like shown:

x = PrettyTable([“City name”, “Area”, “Population”, “Annual Rainfall”])

Now you can add a few rows and make this script do something, add a few rows like shown:

x.add_row([“Adelaide”,1295, 1158259, 600.5])
x.add_row([“Brisbane”,5905, 1857594, 1146.4])
x.add_row([“Darwin”, 112, 120900, 1714.7])
x.add_row([“Hobart”, 1357, 205556, 619.5])
x.add_row([“Sydney”, 2058, 4336374, 1214.8])
x.add_row([“Melbourne”, 1566, 3806092, 646.9])
x.add_row([“Perth”, 5386, 1554769, 869.4])

You can now print this to the console like so:

print x;

You now have a a working script, lets save it and run it, do the following:

1) save the file in vim, esc + : + wq + return/enter

Run this:

# chmod +x myFancyScript.py

# ./myFancyScript.py

Now it should output the following:

<a href="https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/2012/08/15/python-make-tables-that-look-readable-in-the-command-line/prettytable/" rel="attachment wp-att-2196"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2196" title="prettyTable" src="https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/prettyTable.jpg" alt="" width="415" height="194" /></a>

Enjoy and happy coding!

–Karl.