Table rendering is not working

[a14m]

I have a simple script as part of a gem... the prompt, commands are working fine but rendering the tables doesn't work at all...

    TTY::Command.new(printer: :quiet).run('clear')
    TTY::Prompt.new.say("Updated at: #{Time.now}")
    table = TTY::Table.new ['header1','header2'], [['a1', 'a2'], ['b1', 'b2']]
    table.render :ascii

this doesn't output only the table to the terminal... but puts table.to_s outputs the following

"+-------+-------+\n|header1|header2|\n+-------+-------+\n|a1     |a2     |\n|b1     |b2     |\n+-------+-------+"

macOS Sierra (10.12.1)
ruby 2.3.2

[piotrmurach]

Hi Raz, thanks for giving tty a try! The components that you are looking at can also be used separately, e.i. you can install tty-command, tty-prompt and tty-table among many.

The idea behind table rendering is that the render or to_s converts the data into a string format. As is the case in your example, it is a perfectly formatted table. It is up to you what you want to do with it, one thing would be to print it to console like:

puts table.render(:ascii)

[a14m]

sorry but how do I print the table to the tty ? because

puts table.render(:ascii)

prints the following

"+-------+-------+\n|header1|header2|\n+-------+-------+\n|a1     |a2     |\n|b1     |b2     |\n+-------+-------+"

but I need it to print the table to the TTY correctly... not as 1 line

[piotrmurach]

The render or to_s messages return a string, nothing more or nothing else. So calling

table.render(:ascii)

will return actual string which is what you have in your example. Can you see the \n characters? These are line breaks. Any time console sees these it will render content after them on a new line, and hence a nice table. So my question to you would be, how do you render a string in Ruby to console?

[a14m]

Here is a screenshot

GNU bash, version 4.4.5(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin16.3.0)

[piotrmurach]

Ok, I have no idea how you are preserving the string, my guess would be that you are escaping characters hence your \\n break line gets rendered as \n character, which in turn would explain the quotation marks in the output.

Running your code verbatim in irb session does the following

[a14m]

which bash version you have ?

[piotrmurach]

My bash version is 3.2.57(1)-release. Could you please paste the code that you are actually using for creating and rendering the table. I'd like to see what you are exactly doing and maybe then we will solve this mystery.

[a14m]

yeah it's code used in the description of the issue (just added puts to table render)
and I found a solution to show it correctly using Command.new.run('echo', table.render(:unicode))
didn't work with :ascii cause the pipe is causing issues with the echo command

[piotrmurach]

Aha that makes sense, because Command.new.run(cmd) escapes characters, that would totally explain why it was directly rendering the string. Sorry if I sounded a bit patronising by I couldn't for the world understand why the simple code that you have pasted wouldn't work. It is not the first time tty-table was used, I use it for many other scripts etc....

[a14m]

sorry I didn't understand your last comment but the following code

    command = TTY::Command.new(printer: :quiet)
    command.run('clear')
    TTY::Prompt.new.say("Updated at: #{Time.now}")

    table = TTY::Table.new ['header1','header2'], [['a1', 'a2'], ['b1', 'b2']]
    p 'using puts'
    p table.render(:unicode)
    p 'using command'
    command.run('echo', table.render(:unicode))

outputs the following

Updated at: 2016-11-28 00:06:41 +0100
"using puts"
"┌───────┬───────┐\n│header1│header2│\n├───────┼───────┤\n│a1     │a2     │\n│b1     │b2     │\n└───────┴───────┘"
"using command"
┌───────┬───────┐
│header1│header2│
├───────┼───────┤
│a1     │a2     │
│b1     │b2     │
└───────┴───────┘

[piotrmurach]

Why are you using the Kernel.p method? It simply calls inspect on Ruby string and prints to standard out without evaluating the actual string. When you want to print to console why don't you use puts or print. Forget about tty-table, you can see your issue in the following simple example:

multiline = "line1\nline2\nline3"
p multiline
# => "line1\nline2\nline3"
print multiline
# =>
# line1
# line2
# line3

You don't have to use echo at all. Simply print to standard out.