paddington

Simple string-padding and columns in Javascript, useful for terminal output

import paddington from "paddington";

paddington
  .text("Column 1", 12)
  .text("Column 2", 12)
  .text("Column 3", 12)
  .newline()
  .text("First", 12)
  .text("Secondtobetruncated", 12)
  .text("Third", 12)
  .print();

/*
  'Column 1    Column 2    Column 3    '
  'First       Secondtob...Third       '
*/

paddington
  .text("Column 1", 10)
  .pad(2)
  .text("Column 2", 10)
  .pad(2)
  .text("Column 3", 10)
  .pad(2)
  .newline()
  .text("First", 10)
  .pad(2)
  .text("Secondtobetruncated", 10)
  .pad(2)
  .text("Third", 10)
  .pad(2)
  .print();

/*
  'Column 1    Column 2    Column 3    '
  'First       Secondt...  Third       '
*/

Install

Add paddington to your project with:

npm install --save paddington

or

yarn add paddington

Usage

paddington provides a ready-to-use instance of itself as the default export:

const paddington = require("paddington").default;

or

import paddington from "paddington";

Customising

The constructor is available for import if you need to customise options:

const Paddington = require("paddington").Paddington
// or
import { Paddington } from "paddington";

const paddington = new Paddington({
  truncateMarker: "(more)"      // default "..."
  padCharacter: "_"             // default " "
  printFunction: myCustomPrint  // default console.log
});

Truncating and Chalk

When truncating, paddington will correctly truncate strings generated by Chalk:

paddington.text(chalk.red("SUPER ERROR OCCURRED"), 12).print();

// 'SUPER ERRO...' <-- but still pretty and red

API

paddington.text(text: string, width: number)

Add some text to the buffer, padded to width by padCharacter (default " ") or truncated to width (including truncateMarker in the truncated string). Returns itself for chaining.

paddington.text("padded", 10).print();

// 'padded    '

paddington
  .text("chaining", 10)
  .text("is", 10)
  .text("fun", 10)
  .print();

// 'chaining  is        fun          '

paddington.text("truncatedstring", 8).print();

// 'trunc...'

paddington = new Paddington({
  truncateMarker: " (more)"
});

paddington.text("texttexttexttext", 16).print();

// 'texttextt (more)'

paddington.text(text: string)

Add some text to the buffer, without padding or truncation. Useful for last columns that don't need to be bounded in width. Returns itself for chaining.

paddington
  .text("Column 1", 10)
  .text("Column 2", 10)
  .text("Column 3", 10)
  .newline()
  .text("Pad this", 10)
  .text("This too", 10)
  .text("This one is fine, it's the last column wee")
  .print();

// 'Column 1  Column 2  Column 3  '
// 'Pad this  This too  This one is fine, it's the last column wee'

paddington.textLeft(text: string, width: number)

Alias for paddington.text(text: string, width: number)

paddington.textRight(text: string, width: number)

Add some text to the buffer, right-aligned (padded on left side to width). Returns itself for chaining.

paddington
  .text("Column 1", 10)
  .newline()
  .textRight("right", 10)
  .print();

// 'Column 1  '
// '     right'

paddington.pad(width: number)

Add padding of size width to buffer -- uses padCharacter (default " " -- space). Returns itself for chaining.

paddington
  .text("we need")
  .pad(4)
  .text("space")
  .print();

// 'we need    space'

paddington = new Paddington({
  padCharacter: "_"
});

paddington
  .text("we need")
  .pad(4)
  .text("space")
  .print();

// 'we need____space'

paddington.newline()

Add a newline to the buffer. Returns itself for chaining.

paddington
  .text("line", 8)
  .newline()
  .text("break", 8)
  .print();

// 'line    '
// 'break   '

paddington.clear()

Clears the internal paddington buffer. Returns itself for chaining.

paddington
  .text("adding some cool text")
  .clear()
  .print();

// ''

paddington.print()

Prints the internal buffer to printFunction and then clears it. Default printFunction is console.log -- this can be overwritted in the constructor. Returns itself for chaining.

paddington.text("hello, world", 16).print();

// 'hello, world    '

paddington = new Paddington({
  printFunction: mySuperCoolFileOutputter
});

paddington.text("more text").print();

// mySuperCoolFileOutputter("more text") was invoked

paddington.toString()

Returns the current contents of the initial buffer

const woohoo = paddington
  .text("woo", 6)
  .text("hoo", 6)
  .toString();

console.log(woohoo);

// 'woo   hoo   '