I'm getting results from a database and want to output the data as a table 开发者_如何转开发in Java's standard output

I've tried using \t but the first column I want is very variable in length.

Is there a way to display this in a nice table like output?

Use System.out.format . You can set lengths of fields like this:

System.out.format("%32s%10d%16s", string1, int1, string2);

This pads string1, int1, and string2 to 32, 10, and 16 characters, respectively.

See the Javadocs for java.util.Formatter for more information on the syntax (System.out.format uses a Formatter internally).

Using j-text-utils you may print to console a table like:

Output in a table format in Java's System.out

And it as simple as:

TextTable tt = new TextTable(columnNames, data);                                                         
tt.printTable();

The API also allows sorting and row numbering ...

I've created a project that can build much advanced table views. If you supposed to print the table, the width of the table going to have a limit. I have applied it in one of my own project to get a customer invoice print. Following is an example of the print view.

           PLATINUM COMPUTERS(PVT) LTD          
     NO 20/B, Main Street, Kandy, Sri Lanka.    
  Land: 812254630 Mob: 712205220 Fax: 812254639 

                CUSTOMER INVOICE                

+-----------------------+----------------------+
|INFO                   |CUSTOMER              |
+-----------------------+----------------------+
|DATE: 2015-9-8         |ModernTec Distributors|
|TIME: 10:53:AM         |MOB: +94719530398     |
|BILL NO: 12            |ADDRES: No 25, Main St|
|INVOICE NO: 458-80-108 |reet, Kandy.          |
+-----------------------+----------------------+
|                SELLING DETAILS               |
+-----------------+---------+-----+------------+
|ITEM             | PRICE($)|  QTY|       VALUE|
+-----------------+---------+-----+------------+
|Optical mouse    |   120.00|   20|     2400.00|
|Gaming keyboard  |   550.00|   30|    16500.00|
|320GB SATA HDD   |   220.00|   32|     7040.00|
|500GB SATA HDD   |   274.00|   13|     3562.00|
|1TB SATA HDD     |   437.00|   11|     4807.00|
|RE-DVD ROM       |   144.00|   29|     4176.00|
|DDR3 4GB RAM     |   143.00|   13|     1859.00|
|Blu-ray DVD      |    94.00|   28|     2632.00|
|WR-DVD           |   122.00|   34|     4148.00|
|Adapter          |   543.00|   28|    15204.00|
+-----------------+---------+-----+------------+
|               RETURNING DETAILS              |
+-----------------+---------+-----+------------+
|ITEM             | PRICE($)|  QTY|       VALUE|
+-----------------+---------+-----+------------+
|320GB SATA HDD   |   220.00|    4|      880.00|
|WR-DVD           |   122.00|    7|      854.00|
|1TB SATA HDD     |   437.00|    7|     3059.00|
|RE-DVD ROM       |   144.00|    4|      576.00|
|Gaming keyboard  |   550.00|    6|     3300.00|
|DDR3 4GB RAM     |   143.00|    7|     1001.00|
+-----------------+---------+-----+------------+
                              GROSS   59,928.00 
                       DISCOUNT(5%)    2,996.40 
                             RETURN    9,670.00 
                            PAYABLE   47,261.60 
                               CASH   20,000.00 
                             CHEQUE   15,000.00 
                    CREDIT(BALANCE)   12,261.60 






  ---------------------   --------------------- 
     CASH COLLECTOR         GOODS RECEIVED BY   

             soulution by clough.com

This is the code for above print view and you can find the library (Wagu) in here.

I may be very late for the Answer but here a simple and generic solution

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.UUID;

public class TableGenerator {

    private int PADDING_SIZE = 2;
    private String NEW_LINE = "\n";
    private String TABLE_JOINT_SYMBOL = "+";
    private String TABLE_V_SPLIT_SYMBOL = "|";
    private String TABLE_H_SPLIT_SYMBOL = "-";

    public String generateTable(List<String> headersList, List<List<String>> rowsList,int... overRiddenHeaderHeight)
    {
        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

        int rowHeight = overRiddenHeaderHeight.length > 0 ? overRiddenHeaderHeight[0] : 1; 

        Map<Integer,Integer> columnMaxWidthMapping = getMaximumWidhtofTable(headersList, rowsList);

        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);
        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);
        createRowLine(stringBuilder, headersList.size(), columnMaxWidthMapping);
        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);


        for (int headerIndex = 0; headerIndex < headersList.size(); headerIndex++) {
            fillCell(stringBuilder, headersList.get(headerIndex), headerIndex, columnMaxWidthMapping);
        }

        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);

        createRowLine(stringBuilder, headersList.size(), columnMaxWidthMapping);


        for (List<String> row : rowsList) {

            for (int i = 0; i < rowHeight; i++) {
                stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);
            }

            for (int cellIndex = 0; cellIndex < row.size(); cellIndex++) {
                fillCell(stringBuilder, row.get(cellIndex), cellIndex, columnMaxWidthMapping);
            }

        }

        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);
        createRowLine(stringBuilder, headersList.size(), columnMaxWidthMapping);
        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);
        stringBuilder.append(NEW_LINE);

        return stringBuilder.toString();
    }

    private void fillSpace(StringBuilder stringBuilder, int length)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
            stringBuilder.append(" ");
        }
    }

    private void createRowLine(StringBuilder stringBuilder,int headersListSize, Map<Integer,Integer> columnMaxWidthMapping)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < headersListSize; i++) {
            if(i == 0)
            {
                stringBuilder.append(TABLE_JOINT_SYMBOL);   
            }

            for (int j = 0; j < columnMaxWidthMapping.get(i) + PADDING_SIZE * 2 ; j++) {
                stringBuilder.append(TABLE_H_SPLIT_SYMBOL);
            }
            stringBuilder.append(TABLE_JOINT_SYMBOL);
        }
    }


    private Map<Integer,Integer> getMaximumWidhtofTable(List<String> headersList, List<List<String>> rowsList)
    {
        Map<Integer,Integer> columnMaxWidthMapping = new HashMap<>();

        for (int columnIndex = 0; columnIndex < headersList.size(); columnIndex++) {
            columnMaxWidthMapping.put(columnIndex, 0);
        }

        for (int columnIndex = 0; columnIndex < headersList.size(); columnIndex++) {

            if(headersList.get(columnIndex).length() > columnMaxWidthMapping.get(columnIndex))
            {
                columnMaxWidthMapping.put(columnIndex, headersList.get(columnIndex).length());
            }
        }


        for (List<String> row : rowsList) {

            for (int columnIndex = 0; columnIndex < row.size(); columnIndex++) {

                if(row.get(columnIndex).length() > columnMaxWidthMapping.get(columnIndex))
                {
                    columnMaxWidthMapping.put(columnIndex, row.get(columnIndex).length());
                }
            }
        }

        for (int columnIndex = 0; columnIndex < headersList.size(); columnIndex++) {

            if(columnMaxWidthMapping.get(columnIndex) % 2 != 0)
            {
                columnMaxWidthMapping.put(columnIndex, columnMaxWidthMapping.get(columnIndex) + 1);
            }
        }


        return columnMaxWidthMapping;
    }

    private int getOptimumCellPadding(int cellIndex,int datalength,Map<Integer,Integer> columnMaxWidthMapping,int cellPaddingSize)
    {
        if(datalength % 2 != 0)
        {
            datalength++;
        }

        if(datalength < columnMaxWidthMapping.get(cellIndex))
        {
            cellPaddingSize = cellPaddingSize + (columnMaxWidthMapping.get(cellIndex) - datalength) / 2;
        }

        return cellPaddingSize;
    }

    private void fillCell(StringBuilder stringBuilder,String cell,int cellIndex,Map<Integer,Integer> columnMaxWidthMapping)
    {

        int cellPaddingSize = getOptimumCellPadding(cellIndex, cell.length(), columnMaxWidthMapping, PADDING_SIZE);

        if(cellIndex == 0)
        {
            stringBuilder.append(TABLE_V_SPLIT_SYMBOL); 
        }

        fillSpace(stringBuilder, cellPaddingSize);
        stringBuilder.append(cell);
        if(cell.length() % 2 != 0)
        {
            stringBuilder.append(" ");
        }

        fillSpace(stringBuilder, cellPaddingSize);

        stringBuilder.append(TABLE_V_SPLIT_SYMBOL); 

    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        TableGenerator tableGenerator = new TableGenerator();

        List<String> headersList = new ArrayList<>(); 
        headersList.add("Id");
        headersList.add("F-Name");
        headersList.add("L-Name");
        headersList.add("Email");

        List<List<String>> rowsList = new ArrayList<>();

        for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
            List<String> row = new ArrayList<>(); 
            row.add(UUID.randomUUID().toString());
            row.add(UUID.randomUUID().toString());
            row.add(UUID.randomUUID().toString());
            row.add(UUID.randomUUID().toString());

            rowsList.add(row);
        }

        System.out.println(tableGenerator.generateTable(headersList, rowsList));
    }
}

With this kind of Output

+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
|                   Id                   |                F-Name                  |                 L-Name                 |                  Email                 |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
|  70a56f25-d42a-499c-83ac-50188c45a0ac  |  aa04285e-c135-46e2-9f90-988bf7796cd0  |  ac495ba7-d3c7-463c-8c24-9ffde67324bc  |  f6b5851b-41e0-4a4e-a237-74f8e0bff9ab  |
|  6de181ca-919a-4425-a753-78d2de1038ef  |  c4ba5771-ccee-416e-aebd-ef94b07f4fa2  |  365980cb-e23a-4513-a895-77658f130135  |  69e01da1-078e-4934-afb0-5afd6ee166ac  |
|  f3285f33-5083-4881-a8b4-c8ae10372a6c  |  46df25ed-fa0f-42a4-9181-a0528bc593f6  |  d24016bf-a03f-424d-9a8f-9a7b7388fd85  |  4b976794-aac1-441e-8bd2-78f5ccbbd653  |
|  ab799acb-a582-45e7-ba2f-806948967e6c  |  d019438d-0a75-48bc-977b-9560de4e033e  |  8cb2ad11-978b-4a67-a87e-439d0a21ef99  |  2f2d9a39-9d95-4a5a-993f-ceedd5ff9953  |
|  78a68c0a-a824-42e8-b8a8-3bdd8a89e773  |  0f030c1b-2069-4c1a-bf7d-f23d1e291d2a  |  7f647cb4-a22e-46d2-8c96-0c09981773b1  |  0bc944ef-c1a7-4dd1-9eef-915712035a74  |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+

Check this out. The author provides a simple but elegant solution which doesn't require any 3rd party library. http://www.ksmpartners.com/2013/08/nicely-formatted-tabular-output-in-java/

Output in a table format in Java's System.out

public class Main {
 public static void main(String args[]) {
   String format = "|%1$-10s|%2$-10s|%3$-20s|\n";
   System.out.format(format, "A", "AA", "AAA");
   System.out.format(format, "B", "", "BBBBB");
   System.out.format(format, "C", "CCCCC", "CCCCCCCC");

   String ex[] = { "E", "EEEEEEEEEE", "E" };

   System.out.format(String.format(format, (Object[]) ex));
 }
}

differece in sizes of input doesnt effect the output

Because most of solutions is bit outdated I could also suggest asciitable which already available in maven (de.vandermeer:asciitable:0.3.2) and may produce very complicated configurations.

Features (by offsite):

Text table with some flexibility for rules and content, alignment, format, padding, margins, and frames:
add text, as often as required in many different formats (string, text provider, render provider, ST, clusters),
removes all excessive white spaces (tabulators, extra blanks, combinations of carriage return and line feed),
6 different text alignments: left, right, centered, justified, justified last line left, justified last line right,
flexible width, set for text and calculated in many different ways for rendering
padding characters for left and right padding (configurable separately)
padding characters for top and bottom padding (configurable separately)
several options for drawing grids
rules with different styles (as supported by the used grid theme: normal, light, strong, heavy)
top/bottom/left/right margins outside a frame
character conversion to generated text suitable for further process, e.g. for LaTeX and HTML

And usage still looks easy:

AsciiTable at = new AsciiTable();

at.addRule();
at.addRow("row 1 col 1", "row 1 col 2");
at.addRule();
at.addRow("row 2 col 1", "row 2 col 2");
at.addRule();

System.out.println(at.render()); // Finally, print the table to standard out.

Check out the class java.util.Formatter.