03. Outputs

Overview

The basictabler package supports outputting a table in a number of different forms:

A htmlwidget for R-Studio - using tbl$renderTable() to render the table into the “Viewer” tab in R-Studio,
A htmlwidget for Shiny applications - using basictabler(tbl) to render the table into the Shiny app,
As HTML - using either:
- tbl$getHtml() to retrieve a character variable containing HTML, or
- tbl$saveHtml() to save the HTML to a file.
As plain text - using tbl to output to the console or tbl$asCharacter to retrieve as a character value.
Into an Excel Worksheet.

Sometimes it is desirable to retrieve the table as a more standard data type that is easier to work with in R code. A table can be converted to either a matrix or a data frame. Often neither data type is a perfect representation of your table - which option is better will depend upon your use case.

Example Table

The following table is used as the basis of the examples in the rest of this vignette:

# data for the table
saleIds <- c(5334, 5336, 5338)
items <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana")
quantities <- c(5, 8, 6)
prices <- c(0.34452354, 0.4732543, 1.3443243)

# construct the table
library(basictabler)
tbl <- BasicTable$new()
tbl$addData(data.frame(saleIds, items, quantities, prices), 
            firstColumnAsRowHeaders=TRUE,
            explicitColumnHeaders=c("Sale ID", "Item", "Quantity", "Price"),
            columnFormats=list(NULL, NULL, NULL, "%.2f"))
tbl$renderTable()

Output as Plain Text

A table is outputted to the console as plain text simply by using tbl:

# data for the table
saleIds <- c(5334, 5336, 5338)
items <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana")
quantities <- c(5, 8, 6)
prices <- c(0.34452354, 0.4732543, 1.3443243)

# construct the table
library(basictabler)
tbl <- BasicTable$new()
tbl$addData(data.frame(saleIds, items, quantities, prices), 
            firstColumnAsRowHeaders=TRUE,
            explicitColumnHeaders=c("Sale ID", "Item", "Quantity", "Price"),
            columnFormats=list(NULL, NULL, NULL, "%.2f"))

# output table
tbl

Sale ID    Item  Quantity  Price  
   5334   Apple         5   0.34  
   5336  Orange         8   0.47  
   5338  Banana         6   1.34

Alternatively, the plain text representation of the table can be retrieved as a character value using tbl$asCharacter.

Output as HTML

Rendering a htmlwidget

A table is outputted as a htmlwidget simply by calling tbl$renderTable(). There are numerous examples throughout these vignettes, including the example directly above.

For outputting as a htmlwidget in a Shiny application, use basictabler(tbl).

Retrieving HTML

To retrieve the HTML of a table, use tbl$getHtml(). This returns a list of html tag objects built using the htmltools package. This object can be converted to a simple character variable using as.character() or as illustrated below. The CSS declarations for a table can be retrieved using tbl$getCss() - also illustrated below.

# data for the table
saleIds <- c(5334, 5336, 5338)
items <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana")
quantities <- c(5, 8, 6)
prices <- c(0.34452354, 0.4732543, 1.3443243)

# construct the table
library(basictabler)
tbl <- BasicTable$new()
tbl$addData(data.frame(saleIds, items, quantities, prices), 
            firstColumnAsRowHeaders=TRUE,
            explicitColumnHeaders=c("Sale ID", "Item", "Quantity", "Price"),
            columnFormats=list(NULL, NULL, NULL, "%.2f"))

#out the HTML and CSS
cat(paste(tbl$getHtml(), sep="", collapse="\n"))

<table class="Table">
  <tr>
    <th class="ColumnHeader">Sale ID</th>
    <th class="ColumnHeader">Item</th>
    <th class="ColumnHeader">Quantity</th>
    <th class="ColumnHeader">Price</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <th class="RowHeader">5334</th>
    <td class="Cell">Apple</td>
    <td class="Cell">5</td>
    <td class="Cell">0.34</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <th class="RowHeader">5336</th>
    <td class="Cell">Orange</td>
    <td class="Cell">8</td>
    <td class="Cell">0.47</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <th class="RowHeader">5338</th>
    <td class="Cell">Banana</td>
    <td class="Cell">6</td>
    <td class="Cell">1.34</td>
  </tr>
</table>

cat(tbl$getCss())

.Table {border-collapse: collapse; }
.ColumnHeader {font-family: Arial; font-size: 0.75em; padding: 2px; border: 1px solid lightgray; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; background-color: #F2F2F2; }
.RowHeader {font-family: Arial; font-size: 0.75em; padding: 2px 8px 2px 2px; border: 1px solid lightgray; vertical-align: middle; text-align: left; font-weight: bold; background-color: #F2F2F2; }
.Cell {font-family: Arial; font-size: 0.75em; padding: 2px 2px 2px 8px; border: 1px solid lightgray; vertical-align: middle; text-align: right; }
.Total {font-family: Arial; font-size: 0.75em; padding: 2px 2px 2px 8px; border: 1px solid lightgray; vertical-align: middle; text-align: right; font-weight: bold; }

Output in Excel

Please see the Excel Export vignette.

Output as an R Matrix

Converting a table to a matrix can be accomplished as follows:

# data for the table
saleIds <- c(5334, 5336, 5338)
items <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana")
quantities <- c(5, 8, 6)
prices <- c(0.34452354, 0.4732543, 1.3443243)

# construct the table
library(basictabler)
tbl <- BasicTable$new()
tbl$addData(data.frame(saleIds, items, quantities, prices), 
            firstColumnAsRowHeaders=TRUE,
            explicitColumnHeaders=c("Sale ID", "Item", "Quantity", "Price"),
            columnFormats=list(NULL, NULL, NULL, "%.2f"))

# output as matrix
tbl$asMatrix()

     [,1]      [,2]     [,3]       [,4]   
[1,] "Sale ID" "Item"   "Quantity" "Price"
[2,] "5334"    "Apple"  "5"        "0.34" 
[3,] "5336"    "Orange" "8"        "0.47" 
[4,] "5338"    "Banana" "6"        "1.34"

The firstRowAsColumnNames and firstColumnAsRowNames parameters control how the names in the matrix are set. The rawValue parameter specifies whether the matrix should contain the raw values or the formatted values.

# data for the table
saleIds <- c(5334, 5336, 5338)
items <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana")
quantities <- c(5, 8, 6)
prices <- c(0.34452354, 0.4732543, 1.3443243)

# construct the table
library(basictabler)
tbl <- BasicTable$new()
tbl$addData(data.frame(saleIds, items, quantities, prices), 
            firstColumnAsRowHeaders=TRUE,
            explicitColumnHeaders=c("Sale ID", "Item", "Quantity", "Price"),
            columnFormats=list(NULL, NULL, NULL, "%.2f"))

# output as matrix
tbl$asMatrix(firstRowAsColumnNames=TRUE, firstColumnAsRowNames=TRUE, rawValue=TRUE)

     Item     Quantity Price       
5334 "Apple"  "5"      "0.34452354"
5336 "Orange" "8"      "0.4732543" 
5338 "Banana" "6"      "1.3443243"

Output as an R Data Frame

The asDataFrame() function returns a data frame with the same layout as the table, e.g. a table with a body consisting of 10 rows and 2 columns will result in a data frame also containing 10 rows and 2 columns.

Again, the firstRowAsColumnNames and firstColumnAsRowNames parameters control how the names in the data frame are set and the rawValue parameter specifies whether the matrix should contain the raw values or the formatted values.

# data for the table
saleIds <- c(5334, 5336, 5338)
items <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana")
quantities <- c(5, 8, 6)
prices <- c(0.34452354, 0.4732543, 1.3443243)

# construct the table
library(basictabler)
tbl <- BasicTable$new()
tbl$addData(data.frame(saleIds, items, quantities, prices), 
            firstColumnAsRowHeaders=TRUE,
            explicitColumnHeaders=c("Sale ID", "Item", "Quantity", "Price"),
            columnFormats=list(NULL, NULL, NULL, "%.2f"))

# output as data frame
df <- tbl$asDataFrame(firstRowAsColumnNames=TRUE, rawValue=TRUE)
df

  Sale.ID   Item Quantity     Price
1    5334  Apple        5 0.3445235
2    5336 Orange        8 0.4732543
3    5338 Banana        6 1.3443243

str(df)

'data.frame':   3 obs. of  4 variables:
 $ Sale.ID : num  5334 5336 5338
 $ Item    : Factor w/ 3 levels "Apple","Banana",..: 1 3 2
 $ Quantity: num  5 8 6
 $ Price   : num  0.345 0.473 1.344