Description

Print beautiful, flexible tables to the terminal using Ink. This library powers many oclif/Salesforce CLIs and is built for real-world, production output: wide columns, multi-line cells, smart wrapping/truncation, theming, and great CI behavior.

Features

• Rich rendering via Ink with graceful fallback to plain text in CI
• Automatic column sizing with max/explicit width support (including percentages)
• Per-column alignment, padding, and overflow control (wrap, truncate, middle/start/end)
• Header formatting with change-case presets or custom function
• Multiple border styles (outline, headers-only, vertical/horizontal, none, and more)
• Sort and filter data, optionally per-column
• Print multiple tables side-by-side or stacked with layout controls
• Return a string (makeTable) or print directly (printTable/printTables)
• TypeScript-first API with excellent types

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18
• ESM only (this package has "type": "module"). Use import, not require.

Installation

npm install @oclif/table
# or
yarn add @oclif/table
# or
pnpm add @oclif/table
# or
bun add @oclif/table

Quick start

import {printTable} from '@oclif/table'

const data = [
  {name: 'Alice', role: 'Engineer', notes: 'Loves distributed systems'},
  {name: 'Bob', role: 'Designer', notes: 'Enjoys typography and UI'},
]

printTable({
  title: 'Team',
  data,
  columns: [
    {key: 'name', width: 16},
    {key: 'role', width: 14, horizontalAlignment: 'center'},
    {key: 'notes', overflow: 'wrap'},
  ],
})

To generate a string instead of printing to stdout:

import {makeTable} from '@oclif/table'

const output = makeTable({data, columns: ['name', 'role', 'notes']})
// do something with `output`

To print multiple tables in one layout:

import {printTables} from '@oclif/table'

printTables(
  [
    {title: 'Developers', data, columns: ['name', 'role']},
    {title: 'Notes', data, columns: ['notes']},
  ],
  {direction: 'row', columnGap: 4, margin: 1},
)

API

• printTable(options) — renders a single table to stdout.
• makeTable(options): string — renders a single table and returns the output string.
• printTables(tables, options?) — renders multiple tables with layout controls.

All three accept the same TableOptions<T> (documented below). printTables accepts an array of TableOptions plus optional container layout props.

TypeScript

import type {TableOptions} from '@oclif/table'

type Row = {name: string; age: number}
const opts: TableOptions<Row> = {
  data: [{name: 'Ada', age: 36}],
  columns: [
    {key: 'name', name: 'Full Name'},
    {key: 'age', horizontalAlignment: 'right'},
  ],
}

Options reference

Below are the most important options with defaults and behavior. See examples in ./examples for more patterns.

• data (required): array of rows, each a plain object.

• columns: list of keys or objects describing each column.

  • String form: 'name' (uses key as header)
  • Object form: { key, name?, width?, padding?, overflow?, horizontalAlignment?, verticalAlignment? }
    • name: header label (defaults to key or formatted with headerOptions.formatter)
    • width: number of characters or percentage string like '50%'
    • padding: spaces added on both sides (default: table padding)
    • overflow: 'wrap' | 'truncate' | 'truncate-start' | 'truncate-middle' | 'truncate-end'
    • horizontalAlignment: 'left' | 'center' | 'right'
    • verticalAlignment: 'top' | 'center' | 'bottom'

• padding (number): cell padding for all columns. Default: 1.

• maxWidth (number | percentage | 'none'): maximum table width. Defaults to terminal width.

  • When the natural table width exceeds maxWidth, columns shrink and content wraps/truncates based on overflow.
  • Use 'none' to allow unlimited width (useful for very wide outputs; users can resize their terminals).

• width (number | percentage): exact table width. Overrides maxWidth. If wider than the natural width, columns expand evenly.

• overflow: cell overflow behavior. Default: 'truncate'.

  • 'wrap' wraps long content
  • 'truncate' truncates the end
  • 'truncate-start' | 'truncate-middle' | 'truncate-end' choose truncation position

• headerOptions: style options for headers.

  • formatter: either a function (header: string) => string or a change-case preset name: 'camelCase' | 'capitalCase' | 'constantCase' | 'kebabCase' | 'pascalCase' | 'sentenceCase' | 'snakeCase'
  • Styling keys (also supported by titleOptions):
    • color, backgroundColor (named color, hex #rrggbb, or rgb(r,g,b))
    • bold, dimColor, italic, underline, strikethrough, inverse
  • Default header style is bold blue (unless noStyle: true).

• borderStyle: border preset. Default: 'all'.

  • Available: 'all' | 'headers-only' | 'headers-only-with-outline' | 'headers-only-with-underline' | 'horizontal' | 'horizontal-with-outline' | 'none' | 'outline' | 'vertical' | 'vertical-rows-with-outline' | 'vertical-with-outline'

• borderColor: optional border color. When unset, the terminal's default color is used.

• horizontalAlignment: default column alignment. Default: 'left'.

• verticalAlignment: default vertical alignment within cells. Default: 'top'.

• filter(row): predicate to include/exclude rows.

• sort: object mapping keys to 'asc' | 'desc' | (a,b)=>number. Keys order defines multi-column priority.

• title: optional string printed above the table.

• titleOptions: style options for the title (same keys as headerOptions except formatter).

• trimWhitespace: when wrapping text, trim whitespace at line boundaries. Default: true.

• noStyle: disable all styling. Also strips ANSI color codes from your cell content for accurate width calculation.

Container options (for printTables)

printTables(tables, containerOptions) accepts:

• direction: 'row' | 'column' (default 'row')
• columnGap, rowGap: spacing between tables
• alignItems: 'flex-start' | 'center' | 'flex-end'
• margin, marginLeft, marginRight, marginTop, marginBottom

Behavior and environment variables

• Terminal width detection: by default we use your terminal width. Override with OCLIF_TABLE_COLUMN_OVERRIDE.

  • Example: OCLIF_TABLE_COLUMN_OVERRIDE=120 node app.js

• CI-safe output: in CI environments, we automatically fall back to a plain-text renderer (no Ink) for stability.

  • To force Ink rendering in CI, set OCLIF_TABLE_SKIP_CI_CHECK=1.

• Very large data: by default, datasets with 10,000+ rows use the plain-text renderer to avoid memory issues.

  • Override with OCLIF_TABLE_LIMIT=<number> (Salesforce CLIs may also honor SF_TABLE_LIMIT).

Advanced examples

Header formatting with change-case:

import {printTable} from '@oclif/table'

printTable({
  data: [{first_name: 'Ada', last_name: 'Lovelace'}],
  columns: ['first_name', 'last_name'],
  headerOptions: {formatter: 'capitalCase'},
})

Per-column sizing and overflow:

printTable({
  data: [{name: 'A very very long name', notes: 'Multi-line\ncontent supported'}],
  maxWidth: '80%',
  columns: [
    {key: 'name', width: 20, overflow: 'truncate-middle'},
    {key: 'notes', overflow: 'wrap', horizontalAlignment: 'right'},
  ],
})

Switching borders and colors:

printTable({
  title: 'Inventory',
  titleOptions: {bold: true, color: 'cyan'},
  data: [{item: 'Widget', qty: 10}],
  columns: ['item', {key: 'qty', horizontalAlignment: 'right'}],
  borderStyle: 'vertical-with-outline',
  borderColor: 'green',
})

Examples directory

This repo contains many runnable examples in ./examples (including edge cases like very wide/very tall tables). Run any with:

tsx examples/basic.ts

Testing

This package includes snapshot tests for all examples to ensure consistent output across different environments.

Running tests

# Run all tests (including snapshot tests)
yarn test

# Run only snapshot tests
yarn test:examples

# Update snapshots after intentional changes
yarn test:examples:update

How snapshot testing works

Examples are executed in an isolated child process with:

• Fixed terminal width (OCLIF_TABLE_COLUMN_OVERRIDE=120)
• Disabled CI detection unless an example sets it
• ESM loader for TypeScript (ts-node/esm)

Snapshots live in test/__snapshots__/examples/*.txt and mirror the examples directory structure.

Contributing

See the contributing guide.

License

MIT © Salesforce