Designing an expandable command-line interface with lists

Question

These are the three lists I have:

# made up data
products = ['apple','banana','orange'] 
prices = ['£0.11','£0.07','£0.05']
dates = ['02/04/2017','14/09/2018','06/08/2016']

Important to know

The data in these lists will vary along with its size, although they will maintain the same data type.
The first elements of each list are linked, likewise for the second and third element etc...

Desired command line interface:

Product | Price | Date of Purchase
--------|-------|------------------
 apple  | £0.11 |    02/04/2017
--------|-------|------------------
 banana | £0.07 |    14/09/2018
--------|-------|------------------
 orange | £0.05 |    06/08/2016

I want to create a table like this. It should obviously continue if there are more elements in each list but I don't know how I would create it.

I could do

print(""" Product | Price | Date of Purchase   # etc...
          --------|-------|------------------
              %s  |   %s  |     %s 
""" % (products[0],prices[0],dates[0]))

But I think this would be hardcoding the interface, which isn't ideal because the list has an undetermined length

Any help?

Have you tried Pandas? – Ernest S Kirubakaran Dec 28 '18 at 04:59 — Ernest S Kirubakaran, Dec 28 '18 at 04:59
I have not heard of it, is it needed? – Newbie101 Dec 28 '18 at 05:00 — Newbie101, Dec 28 '18 at 05:00
You can easily do it using pandas library – Ernest S Kirubakaran Dec 28 '18 at 05:01 — Ernest S Kirubakaran, Dec 28 '18 at 05:01

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 28 '18 at 05:04

Try pandas:

import pandas as pd
products = ['apple','banana','orange'] 
prices = ['£0.11','£0.07','£0.05']
dates = ['02/04/2017','14/09/2018','06/08/2016']

df = pd.DataFrame({"Product": products, "Price": prices, "Date of Purchase": dates})

print(df)

Output:

  Product  Price Date of Purchase
0   apple  £0.11       02/04/2017
1  banana  £0.07       14/09/2018
2  orange  £0.05       06/08/2016

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 28 '18 at 05:06

import beautifultable
from beautifultable import BeautifulTable
table = BeautifulTable()
# made up data
products = ['apple','banana','orange'] 
prices = ['£0.11','£0.07','£0.05']
dates = ['02/04/2017','14/09/2018','06/08/2016']

table.column_headers=['Product' ,'Price','Date of Purchase']
for i in zip(products,prices,dates):
    table.append_row(list(i))
print(table)

output is :

+---------+-------+------------------+
| Product | Price | Date of Purchase |
+---------+-------+------------------+
|  apple  | £0.11 |    02/04/2017    |
+---------+-------+------------------+
| banana  | £0.07 |    14/09/2018    |
+---------+-------+------------------+
| orange  | £0.05 |    06/08/2016    |
+---------+-------+------------------+

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 28 '18 at 05:37

If you want a version that doesn't utilize a library, here's a fairly simple function that makes use of some list comprehensions

def print_table(headers, *columns):
    # Ignore any columns of data that don't have a header
    columns = columns[:len(headers)]

    # Start with a space to set the header off from the left edge, then join the header strings with " | "
    print(" " + " | ".join(headers))
    # Draw the header separator with column dividers based on header length
    print("|".join(['-' * (len(header) + 2) for header in headers]))

    # Iterate over all lists passed in, and combine them together in a tuple by row
    for row in zip(*columns):
        # Center the contents within the space available in the column based on the header width
        print("|".join([
            col.center((len(headers[idx]) + 2), ' ')
            for idx, col in enumerate(row)
        ]))

This doesn't handle cell values that are longer than the column header length + 2. But that would be easy to implement with a truncation of the cell contents (an example of string truncation can be seen here).

Designing an expandable command-line interface with lists

Important to know

Desired command line interface:

I could do

3 Answers3