PHP Array to Text Table Function

Have you ever wanted to display the contents of an array as a table in a command line script? If so, you will have no doubt realised that it takes somewhat longer than it’s html equivalent.

I needed to output some data in a tabular format from a PHP CLI script this week. MySQL does a good job of this with it’s own command line interface, so my first hope was that someone may have replicated this in a PHP function. After a fair bit of searching on Google, I still couldn’t find a suitable tool, so I decided to write my own.

Please note that it is not perfect; e.g. it will break with unpredictable results if the array you pass to it is not correctly formed. However, if you want a quick function that converts an array to a table, then this will certainly help:

<style type="text/css">
 * {font-family:courier new;}
</style>

<?

/*
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// FUNCTION: draw_text_table ($table)
// Accepts an array ($table) and returns a text table
// Array must be of the form:

$table[1]['id']       = '1';

$table[1]['make']     = 'Citroen';
$table[1]['model']    = 'Saxo';
$table[1]['version']  = '1.4 West Coast';

$table[2]['id']       = '2';
$table[2]['make']     = 'Honda';
$table[2]['model']    = 'Civic';
$table[2]['version']  = '1.6 VTi';

$table[3]['id']       = '3';

$table[3]['make']     = 'BMW';
$table[3]['model']    = '3 Series';
$table[3]['version']  = '328 Ci';

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
*/

function draw_text_table ($table) {
    
    // Work out max lengths of each cell

    foreach ($table AS $row) {
        $cell_count = 0;
        foreach ($row AS $key=>$cell) {
            $cell_length = strlen($cell);

            $cell_count++;
            if (!isset($cell_lengths[$key]) || $cell_length > $cell_lengths[$key]) $cell_lengths[$key] = $cell_length;

        }    
    }

    // Build header bar

    $bar = '+';
    $header = '|';
    $i=0;

    foreach ($cell_lengths AS $fieldname => $length) {
        $i++;
        $bar .= str_pad('', $length+2, '-')."+";

        $name = $i.") ".$fieldname;
        if (strlen($name) > $length) {
            // crop long headings

            $name = substr($name, 0, $length-1);
        }
        $header .= ' '.str_pad($name, $length, ' ', STR_PAD_RIGHT) . " |";

    }

    $output = '';

    $output .= $bar."\n";
    $output .= $header."\n";

    $output .= $bar."\n";

    // Draw rows

    foreach ($table AS $row) {
        $output .= "|";

        foreach ($row AS $key=>$cell) {
            $output .= ' '.str_pad($cell, $cell_lengths[$key], ' ', STR_PAD_RIGHT) . " |";

        }
        $output .= "\n";
    }

    $output .= $bar."\n";

    return $output;

}

$table[1]['id']       = '1';
$table[1]['make']     = 'Citroen';

$table[1]['model']    = 'Saxo';
$table[1]['version']  = '1.4 West Coast';

$table[2]['id']          = '2';
$table[2]['make']     = 'Honda';

$table[2]['model']    = 'Civic';
$table[2]['version']  = '1.6 VTi';

$table[3]['id']          = '3';
$table[3]['make']     = 'BMW';

$table[3]['model']    = '3 Series';
$table[3]['version']  = '328 Ci';

echo 'This function takes an array like this:<br /><pre>';

var_dump($table);

echo '</pre>And converts it into a text table like this:<br /><pre>';

echo draw_text_table ($table);

echo '</pre>Handy for command line output!';

?>