Re: printing a table in html using data read from a text file

[bjelli]

HTML::Table is a very handy module that gives you a table object which you can manipulate for a while before finally printing it out.

The rows and columns in a HTML::Table are counted on a grid, starting at 1,1. Cells that span several columns and/or rows do not disturb the count:

+---+---+---+---+---+
|1/1|2/1|3/1|4/1|5/1|
+---+---+---+---+---+
|1/2|2/2|3/2|4/2|5/2|
+   +---+---+---+---+
|   |2/3|3/3    |5/3|
+---+---+---+---+---+
|1/4|2/4|3/4|4/4    |
+---+---+---+       +
|1/5|2/5|3/5|       |
+---+---+---+---+---+

Here's my test-data:

csc,tech,base
csc,comp,acm
csc,mous,base
new,this,that
other,some,sing
other,some,sels

And the program:

use SuperSplit;
use HTML::Table;

$data = supersplit_open( ',', 'table.txt');

I first generate an array that holds the first column, in my example that's (csc,csc,csc,new,other,other). From that I compute a seconde array that hold the count of the words in the first column, here this is (3,0,0,1,2,0). (I bet someone here could turn this into a one-liner <kbd>;-)</kbd>

@firstcol = map { $$_[0]  } @$data;
@numbers = (1) x scalar(@firstcol); # init to (1,1,1,...)

for ($i = $#firstcol; $i > 0; $i--) {
        if ($firstcol[$i] eq $firstcol[$i-1]) {
                $numbers[$i-1] = $numbers[$i]+1;
                $numbers[$i] = 0;
        }
}

Then I generate the plain table (without spanning cells)

$table = new HTML::Table;
$table -> setBorder(2);
foreach $row (@$data) {
        $table->addRow( @$row );
}
# $table->print;

And finally I walk down the first column and set the spanning:

foreach $rowno (0..$#firstcol) {
    if ($numbers[$rowno]) {
        $table->setCellRowSpan($rowno+1, 1, $numbers[$rowno]);
        $table->setRowVAlign($rowno+1, "TOP")
    };
}

$table->print;

The output of the program:

csc	tech	base
	comp	acm
	mous	base
new	this	that
other	some	sing
	some	sels

Links and typos fixed june 11, thanks to jeffa

--
Brigitte    'I never met a chocolate I didnt like'    Jellinek
http://www.horus.com/~bjelli/         http://perlwelt.horus.at

[merlyn]

Thanks! I took your code as an inspiration, and coded it for my next Web Techniques column, and will credit you in the column. Thanks for the idea!

To play with the program, click on the column headers once for ascending sort, twice for descending. It autodetects whether there should be an alpha sort or a numeric sort. Yeah, it's not the best, but the program's only 70 lines of code or so.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker