export_table: Data frame and Tables Pretty Formatting

In insight: Easy Access to Model Information for Various Model Objects

Data frame and Tables Pretty Formatting

Description

Function to export data frames into tables, which can be printed to the console, or displayed in markdown or HTML format (and thereby, exported to other formats like Word or PDF). The table width is automatically adjusted to fit into the width of the display device (e.g., width of console). Use the table_width argument to control this behaviour.

Usage

export_table(
  x,
  sep = " | ",
  header = "-",
  cross = NULL,
  empty_line = NULL,
  digits = 2,
  protect_integers = TRUE,
  missing = "",
  width = NULL,
  format = NULL,
  title = NULL,
  caption = title,
  subtitle = NULL,
  footer = NULL,
  column_names = NULL,
  align = NULL,
  by = NULL,
  zap_small = FALSE,
  table_width = "auto",
  remove_duplicates = FALSE,
  row_groups = NULL,
  column_groups = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

x	A data frame. May also be a list of data frames, to export multiple data frames into multiple tables.
sep	Column separator.
header	Header separator. Can be NULL.
cross	Character that is used where separator and header lines cross.
empty_line	Separator used for empty lines. If NULL, line remains empty (i.e. filled with whitespaces).
digits	Number of digits for rounding or significant figures. May also be "signif" to return significant figures or "scientific" to return scientific notation. Control the number of digits by adding the value as suffix, e.g. digits = "scientific4" to have scientific notation with 4 decimal places, or digits = "signif5" for 5 significant figures (see also signif()).
protect_integers	Should integers be kept as integers (i.e., without decimals)?
missing	Value by which NA values are replaced. By default, an empty string (i.e. "") is returned for NA.
width	Refers to the width of columns (with numeric values). Can be either NULL, a number or a named numeric vector. If NULL, the width for each column is adjusted to the minimum required width. If a number, columns with numeric values will have the minimum width specified in width. If a named numeric vector, value names are matched against column names, and for each match, the specified width is used (see 'Examples'). Only applies to text-format (see format).
format	Name of output-format, as string. If NULL (or "text"), returned output is used for basic printing. Can be one of NULL (the default) resp. "text" for plain text, "markdown" (or "md") for markdown and "html" for HTML output. A special option is "tt", which creates a tinytable::tt() object, where the output format is dependent on the context where the table is used, i.e. it can be markdown format when export_table() is used in markdown files, or LaTeX format when creating PDFs etc.
title, caption, subtitle	Table title (same as caption) and subtitle, as strings. If NULL, no title or subtitle is printed, unless it is stored as attributes (table_title, or its alias table_caption, and table_subtitle). If you want to force that no title is printed, even if present as attribute, use "", which will never print titles. If x is a list of data frames, caption may be a list of table captions, one for each table.
footer	Table footer, as string. For markdown-formatted tables, table footers, due to the limitation in markdown rendering, are actually just a new text line under the table. If x is a list of data frames, footer may be a list of table captions, one for each table. If NULL, no footer is printed, unless it is stored as attributes (table_footer). If you want to force that no footer is printed, even if present as attribute, use "", which will never print footers.
column_names	Character vector of names that will be used as column names in the table. Must either be of same length as columns in the table, or a named vector, where names (LHS) indicate old column names, and values (RHS) are used as new column names.
align	Column alignment. For markdown-formatted tables, the default align = NULL will right-align numeric columns, while all other columns will be left-aligned. If format = "html", the default is left-align first column and center all remaining. May be a string to indicate alignment rules for the complete table, like "left", "right", "center" or "firstleft" (to left-align first column, center remaining); or a string with abbreviated alignment characters, where the length of the string must equal the number of columns. For instance, align = "lccrl" would left-align the first column, center the second and third, right-align column four and left-align the fifth column.
by	Name of column(s) in x that indicates grouping for tables. When format = "html", by is passed down to gt::gt(groupname_col = by). Likewise, for format = "tt", by indicates the name of the variable in the data frame, which is then used to create row headers in the table. For markdown and text format, x is internally split into a list of data frames. See also row_groups to group rows in the printed output.
zap_small	Logical, if TRUE, small values are rounded after digits decimal places. If FALSE, values with more decimal places than digits are printed in scientific notation.
table_width	Numeric,"auto", NULL or Inf, indicating the width of the complete table. If table_width = "auto" (default) and the table is wider than the current width (i.e. line length) of the console (or any other source for textual output, like markdown files), the table is split into multiple parts. Else, if table_width is numeric and table rows are larger than table_width, the table is split into multiple parts. For each new table, the first column is repeated for better orientation. Use NULL or Inf to turn off automatic splitting of the table. ⁠options(easystats_table_width = <value>)⁠ can be used to set a default width for tables.
remove_duplicates	Logical, if TRUE and table is split into multiple parts, duplicated ("empty") rows will be removed. If FALSE, empty rows will be preserved. Only applies when table_width is not NULL (or Inf) and table is split into multiple parts.
row_groups	Named list, can be used as alternative to by to group rows in the printed output, but in a more flexible way. List elements may either be character vectors that match the names of values in the first column of the data frame that belong to one group, or list elements can be row numbers of those value rows that should belong to one group. The names of the list elements will be used as group names, which will be inserted as "header row". Rows will be re-ordered according to the order used in row_groups, while all rows with non-matching values will be added to the end.
column_groups	Named list, can be used to group columns in the printed output. List elements must indicate column indices for columns that should belong to one group. The names of the list elements will be used as group names, which will be inserted as "column header row". Currently only works for format = "tt" or format = "html".
verbose	Toggle messages and warnings.
...	Arguments passed to tinytable::tt() and tinytable::style_tt() when format = "tt".

Value

If format = "text" (or NULL), a formatted character string is returned. format = "markdown" (or "md") returns a character string of class knitr_kable, which renders nicely in markdown files. format = "html" returns an gt object (created by the gt package), which - by default - is displayed in the IDE's viewer pane or default browser. This object can be further modified with the various gt-functions. format = "tt" returns a tinytable::tt() object, which is a lightweight table format that can be used in markdown, LaTeX, HTML and other formats, depending on the context where the table is used.

Note

The values for caption, subtitle and footer can also be provided as attributes of x, e.g. if caption = NULL and x has attribute table_caption, the value for this attribute will be used as table caption. table_subtitle is the attribute for subtitle, and table_footer for footer.

See Also

Vignettes Formatting, printing and exporting tables and Formatting model parameters.

Examples

export_table(head(iris))
export_table(head(iris), cross = "+")
export_table(head(iris), sep = " ", header = "*", digits = 1)

# split longer tables
export_table(head(iris), table_width = 30)

# group (split) tables by variables
export_table(head(mtcars, 8), by = "cyl")


# colored footers
data(iris)
x <- as.data.frame(iris[1:5, ])
attr(x, "table_footer") <- c("This is a yellow footer line.", "yellow")
export_table(x)

attr(x, "table_footer") <- list(
  c("\nA yellow line", "yellow"),
  c("\nAnd a red line", "red"),
  c("\nAnd a blue line", "blue")
)
export_table(x)

attr(x, "table_footer") <- list(
  c("Without the ", "yellow"),
  c("new-line character ", "red"),
  c("we can have multiple colors per line.", "blue")
)
export_table(x)

# rename column names
export_table(x, column_names = letters[1:5])
export_table(x, column_names = c(Species = "a"))


# column-width
d <- data.frame(
  x = c(1, 2, 3),
  y = c(100, 200, 300),
  z = c(10000, 20000, 30000)
)
export_table(d)
export_table(d, width = 8)
export_table(d, width = c(x = 5, z = 10))
export_table(d, width = c(x = 5, y = 5, z = 10), align = "lcr")

# group rows in the table
## Not run: 
data(mtcars)

# fit model
mtcars$cyl <- as.factor(mtcars$cyl)
mtcars$gear <- as.factor(mtcars$gear)
model <- lm(mpg ~ hp + gear * vs + cyl + drat, data = mtcars)

# model summary, don't select "Intercept" parameter
mp <- as.data.frame(format(
  parameters::model_parameters(model, drop = "^\\(Intercept")
))

# define groups for the table
groups <- list(
  Engine = c("cyl [6]", "cyl [8]", "vs", "hp"),
  Interactions = c(8, 9),
  Controls = c(2, 3, 7)
)

# export table with groups, using tinytable format
export_table(mp, format = "tt", row_groups = groups)

## End(Not run)

insight documentation built on Aug. 19, 2025, 1:12 a.m.