How to Print "Pretty" String Output in Python

Question

I have a list of dicts with the fields classid, dept, coursenum, area, and title from a sql query. I would like to output the values in a human readable format. I was thinking a Column header at the top of each and then in each column the approrpiate output ie:

CLASSID     DEPT     COURSE NUMBER        AREA     TITLE
foo         bar      foo                  bar      foo
yoo         hat      yoo                  bar      hat

(obviously with standard alignment/spacing)

How would I accomplish this in python?

Answer 1

Standard Python string formatting may suffice.

# assume that your data rows are tuples
template = "{0:8}|{1:10}|{2:15}|{3:7}|{4:10}" # column widths: 8, 10, 15, 7, 10
print template.format("CLASSID", "DEPT", "COURSE NUMBER", "AREA", "TITLE") # header
for rec in your_data_source: 
  print template.format(*rec)

Or

# assume that your data rows are dicts
template = "{CLASSID:8}|{DEPT:10}|{C_NUM:15}|{AREA:7}|{TITLE:10}" # same, but named
print template.format( # header
  CLASSID="CLASSID", DEPT="DEPT", C_NUM="COURSE NUMBER", 
  AREA="AREA", TITLE="TITLE"
) 
for rec in your_data_source: 
  print template.format(**rec)

Play with alignment, padding, and exact format specifiers to get best results.