libfort (Library to create FORmatted Tables)

libfort is a simple crossplatform library to create formatted text tables.

Features:

• Easy to integrate (only 2 files)
• Customization of appearance (various border styles and row/column/cell properties for indentation, alignment, padding)
• A number of functions to fill the table (add content by adding separate cells, rows or use printf like functions)
• Support of multiple lines in cells
• Support of UTF-8 and wide characters

Design goals

• Portability. All main OSes (Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD) and compilers are supported.
• Maintainability and robustness. libfort is written in C because it is much less complicated than C++ and it can be used in both C and C++ projects and even on platforms without C++ compiler.
• Trivial integration. Therefore all source code files are amalgamed in only 2 files.
• Heavy testing. The goal is to cover 100% of the code (it is not reached yet) and to run tests on all major compilers and platforms.

Integration

Add 2 files ( fort.c and fort.h from lib directory) to your C or C++ project and include

#include "fort.h"

in your source code where you will use libfort functions.

For C++ projects that use compiler with C++11 support (and later) there are also availabe convenient C++ wrappers around C functions (see fort.hpp in lib direrctory). In that case instead of fort.h you will need to include

#include "fort.hpp"

Integration with cmake

In case libfort is installed on the host system it should be sufficient to use find_package:

find_package(libfort)
target_link_libraries(your_target PRIVATE libfort::fort)

In case you downloaded libfort sources and embedded them in your project (e.g. put all sources in directory third-party/libfort) you can use add_subdirectory:

# Disable building tests and examples in libfort project
set(FORT_ENABLE_TESTING OFF CACHE INTERNAL "")

add_subdirectory(third-party/libfort)
target_link_libraries(your_target PRIVATE fort)

Documentation

See guide in tutorial of the library and doxygen API documentation.

Getting Started

The common libfort usage pattern (C API):

• create a table (ft_create_table);
• fill it with data (ft_write_ln, fr_ptrintf_ln, ft_row_write, ...);
• modify basic table appearance (ft_set_cell_prop, ft_set_border_style ...)
• convert table to string representation (ft_to_string);
• destroy the table (ft_destroy_table)

Here are some examples:

Basic example

/* C API */
#include <stdio.h>
#include "fort.h"
int main(void)
{
    ft_table_t *table = ft_create_table();
    /* Set "header" type for the first row */
    ft_set_cell_prop(table, 0, FT_ANY_COLUMN, FT_CPROP_ROW_TYPE, FT_ROW_HEADER);

    ft_write_ln(table, "N", "Driver", "Time", "Avg Speed");

    ft_write_ln(table, "1", "Ricciardo", "1:25.945", "222.128");
    ft_write_ln(table, "2", "Hamilton", "1:26.373", "221.027");
    ft_write_ln(table, "3", "Verstappen", "1:26.469", "220.782");

    printf("%s\n", ft_to_string(table));
    ft_destroy_table(table);
}

/* C++ API */
#include <iostream>
#include "fort.hpp"
int main(void)
{
    fort::char_table table;
    table << fort::header
        << "N" << "Driver" << "Time" << "Avg Speed" << fort::endr
        << "1" << "Ricciardo" << "1:25.945" << "47.362" << fort::endr
        << "2" << "Hamilton" << "1:26.373" << "35.02" << fort::endr
        << "3" << "Verstappen" << "1:26.469" << "29.78" << fort::endr;

    std::cout << table.to_string() << std::endl;
}

Output:

+---+------------+----------+-----------+
| N | Driver     | Time     | Avg Speed |
+---+------------+----------+-----------+
| 1 | Ricciardo  | 1:25.945 | 47.362    |
| 2 | Hamilton   | 1:26.373 | 35.02     |
| 3 | Verstappen | 1:26.469 | 29.78     |
+---+------------+----------+-----------+

Customize table appearance

/* C API */
#include <stdio.h>
#include "fort.h"
int main(void)
{
    ft_table_t *table = ft_create_table();
    /* Change border style */
    ft_set_border_style(table, FT_DOUBLE2_STYLE);

    /* Set "header" type for the first row */
    ft_set_cell_prop(table, 0, FT_ANY_COLUMN, FT_CPROP_ROW_TYPE, FT_ROW_HEADER);
    ft_write_ln(table, "Movie title", "Director", "Year", "Rating");

    ft_write_ln(table, "The Shawshank Redemption", "Frank Darabont", "1994", "9.5");
    ft_write_ln(table, "The Godfather", "Francis Ford Coppola", "1972", "9.2");
    ft_write_ln(table, "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Stanley Kubrick", "1968", "8.5");

    /* Set center alignment for the 1st and 3rd columns */
    ft_set_cell_prop(table, FT_ANY_ROW, 1, FT_CPROP_TEXT_ALIGN, FT_ALIGNED_CENTER);
    ft_set_cell_prop(table, FT_ANY_ROW, 3, FT_CPROP_TEXT_ALIGN, FT_ALIGNED_CENTER);

    printf("%s\n", ft_to_string(table));
    ft_destroy_table(table);
}

/* C++ API */
#include <iostream>
#include "fort.hpp"
int main(void)
{
    fort::char_table table;
    /* Change border style */
    table.set_border_style(FT_DOUBLE2_STYLE);

    table << fort::header
        << "Movie title" << "Director" << "Year" << "Rating" << fort::endr
        << "The Shawshank Redemption" << "Frank Darabont" << "1994" << "9.5" << fort::endr
        << "The Godfather" << "Francis Ford Coppola" << "1972" << "9.2" << fort::endr
        << "2001: A Space Odyssey" << "Stanley Kubrick" << "1968" << "8.5" << fort::endr;

    /* Set center alignment for the 1st and 3rd columns */
    table.column(1).set_cell_text_align(fort::text_align::center);
    table.column(3).set_cell_text_align(fort::text_align::center);

    std::cout << table.to_string() << std::endl;
}

Output:

╔══════════════════════════╤══════════════════════╤══════╤════════╗
║ Movie title              │       Director       │ Year │ Rating ║
╠══════════════════════════╪══════════════════════╪══════╪════════╣
║ The Shawshank Redemption │    Frank Darabont    │ 1994 │  9.5   ║
╟──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────┼────────╢
║ The Godfather            │ Francis Ford Coppola │ 1972 │  9.2   ║
╟──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────┼────────╢
║ 2001: A Space Odyssey    │   Stanley Kubrick    │ 1968 │  8.5   ║
╚══════════════════════════╧══════════════════════╧══════╧════════╝

Different ways to fill table with data

/* C API */
#include <stdio.h>
#include "fort.h"
int main(void)
{
    ft_table_t *table = ft_create_table();
    /* Set "header" type for the first row */
    ft_set_cell_prop(table, 0, FT_ANY_COLUMN, FT_CPROP_ROW_TYPE, FT_ROW_HEADER);
    ft_write_ln(table, "N", "Planet", "Speed, km/s", "Temperature, K");

    /* Fill row with printf like function */
    ft_printf_ln(table, "1|%s|%6.3f|%d", "Mercury", 47.362, 340);

    /* Fill row explicitly with strings */
    ft_write_ln(table, "2", "Venus", "35.02", "737");

    /* Fill row with the array of strings */
    const char *arr[4] = {"3", "Earth", "29.78", "288"};
    ft_row_write_ln(table, 4, arr);

    printf("%s\n", ft_to_string(table));
    ft_destroy_table(table);
}

/* C++ API */
#include <iostream>
#include "fort.hpp"
int main(void)
{
    fort::char_table table;
    table << fort::header;
    /* Fill each cell with operator[] */
    table [0][0] = "N";
    table [0][1] = "Planet";
    table [0][2] = "Speed, km/s";
    table [0][3] = "Temperature, K";
    table << fort::endr;

    /* Fill with iostream operator<< */
    table << 1 << "Mercury" << 47.362 << 340 << fort::endr;

    /* Fill row explicitly with strings */
    table.write_ln("2", "Venus", "35.02", "737");

    /* Fill row with data from the container */
    std::vector<std::string> arr = {"3", "Earth", "29.78", "288"};
    table.range_write_ln(std::begin(arr), std::end(arr));

    std::cout << table.to_string() << std::endl;
}

Output:

+---+---------+-------------+----------------+
| N | Planet  | Speed, km/s | Temperature, K |
+---+---------+-------------+----------------+
| 1 | Mercury | 47.362      | 340            |
| 2 | Venus   | 35.02       | 737            |
| 3 | Earth   | 29.78       | 288            |
+---+---------+-------------+----------------+