Cell alignment with markdown renderer does not work

[TLINDEN]

As already mentioned in #244, the cell alignment behavior of the markdown renderer has changed in 1.0.x. In the previous version the default behavior was to automatically align strings left and numbers right. However, the new renderer's default is to align centered. That would be no issue if there was a flag to bring back the old behavior, but there's no such flag. The only thing I can configure is left, center, right or no alignment (which is the same as center). There's no auto alignment.

Here's a table output of the previous version of the module:

|                        NAME                        | READY | STATUS  | STARTS |  AGE  |
|----------------------------------------------------|-------|---------|--------|-------|
| alertmanager-kube-prometheus-alertmanager-0        | 2/2   | Running |     35 | 11d   |
| kube-prometheus-blackbox-exporter-5d85b5d8f4-tskh7 | 1/1   | Running |     17 | 1h44m |
| grafana-fcc54cbc9-bk7s8                            | 1/1   | Running |     17 | 1d    |
| kube-prometheus-kube-state-metrics-b4cd9487-75p7f  | 1/1   | Running |     20 | 45m   |
| kube-prometheus-node-exporter-bfzpl                | 1/1   | Running |     17 | 54s   |

As can be seen, strings are left and numbers (the "starts" column) are right aligned. If have tried every alignment option available, see sample code here, but the output is always the same (centered). I also tried the ColumnAligns option, which doesn't work as well (last table in the output):

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
|   x    |   y    |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
|   x    |   y    |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
|   x    |   y    |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
|   x    |   y    |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
|   x    |   y    |

Is it possible to configure somehow the alignment of the markdown renderer to get the old behavior or could you please add an option for this?

Many thanks!
Tom

[olekukonko]

The markdown follows strict markdown rendering, and your table looks like markdown but isn't. In standard Markdown, table column alignment is indicated by colons (:) in the second row (the alignment row). You have text center and boldly left with no indicator. If there is no indicator, the text cannot be centered.

The reason why the alignment was ignored is because it only respects alignment for the header, and the header determines the alignment of the column.

This will require a major refactor. Alignment should be grouped like padding, with Global and PerColumn options. I also think that the markdown renderer should have been more flexible and supported ALIGN none.

The issue arises when alignment is conflicting. In such cases, the table line will not indicate alignment, I think. I'm still not sure, but this has to be looked into deeply.

also to achieve the kind of effect above we just need to to do

package main

import (
	"os"
	"sync"

	"github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter"
	"github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter/renderer"
	"github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter/tw"
)

var wg sync.WaitGroup

func main() {
	data := [][]string{
		{"node1.example.com", "Ready", "compute", "1.11"},
		{"node2.example.com", "Ready", "compute", "1.11"},
		{"node3.example.com", "Ready", "compute", "1.11"},
		{"node4.example.com", "NotReady", "compute", "1.11"},
	}

	table := tablewriter.NewTable(os.Stdout,

		// tell render not to render any lines and separators
		tablewriter.WithRenderer(renderer.NewBlueprint(tw.Rendition{
			Borders: tw.Border{
				Left:      tw.On,
				Right:     tw.On,
				Top:       tw.Off,
				Bottom:    tw.Off,
				Overwrite: true,
			},
			Settings: tw.Settings{
				Separators: tw.Separators{
					ShowHeader:     tw.On,
					ShowFooter:     tw.Off,
					BetweenRows:    tw.Off,
					BetweenColumns: 0,
				},
			},
			Symbols: tw.NewSymbols(tw.StyleASCII),
		})),

		// Set general configuration
		tablewriter.WithConfig(
			tablewriter.Config{
				Header: tw.CellConfig{
					Formatting: tw.CellFormatting{
						Alignment: tw.AlignLeft, // force alignment for header
					},
				},
				Row: tw.CellConfig{
					Formatting: tw.CellFormatting{
						Alignment: tw.AlignLeft, // force alightment for body
					},
				},
			},
		),
	)
	table.Header("Name", "Status", "Role", "Version")
	table.Bulk(data)
	table.Render()
}

| NAME              | STATUS   | ROLE    | VERSION |
+-------------------+----------+---------+---------+
| node1.example.com | Ready    | compute | 1.11    |
| node2.example.com | Ready    | compute | 1.11    |
| node3.example.com | Ready    | compute | 1.11    |
| node4.example.com | NotReady | compute | 1.11    |

[olekukonko]

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter"
	"github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter/renderer"
	"github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter/tw"
)

func main() {
	header := []string{"colfoo", "colbar"}
	data := [][]string{{"x", "y"}}

	cfgs := []tw.CellConfig{
		{
			Formatting: tw.CellFormatting{
				Alignment: tw.AlignLeft,
			},
		},
		{
			Formatting: tw.CellFormatting{
				Alignment: tw.AlignRight,
			},
		},
		{
			Formatting: tw.CellFormatting{
				Alignment: tw.AlignCenter,
			},
		},
		{
			Formatting: tw.CellFormatting{
				Alignment: tw.AlignNone,
			},
		},
		{
			ColumnAligns: []tw.Align{
				tw.AlignLeft, tw.AlignRight,
			},
		},
	}

	for _, cfg := range cfgs {
		render(header, data, cfg)
	}
}

func render(header []string, data [][]string, cfg tw.CellConfig) {
	table := tablewriter.NewTable(os.Stdout,
		tablewriter.WithRenderer(renderer.NewMarkdown()),
		tablewriter.WithConfig(tablewriter.Config{Header: cfg}),
	)

	table.Header(header)
	table.Bulk(data)
	table.Render()
	fmt.Println()
}

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:-------|:-------|
| x      | y      |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|-------:|-------:|
|      x |      y |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
|   x    |   y    |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:------:|:------:|
| x      | y      |

| COLFOO | COLBAR |
|:-------|-------:|
| x      |      y |

[TLINDEN]

Ok, I changed my code accordingly and now everything seems to work. Although the auto-alignment feature is missing, I'd say it's ok. I'll just left align everything, that's good enough for my purposes.

Thanks a lot again for your work and support!

[olekukonko]

you are very much welcome ... @TLINDEN