In CTU-Bern/btabler: Nice Formatting For LaTeX Tables

btabler

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE,
                      fig.path = "man/figures/README-")

README

btabler is a package which adds wraps the xtable package, adding additional functionality such as merging header columns.

Note that btabler does not produce HTML tables. If using .Rmd, output should be pdf_document.

Example usage

Installing the package

The package can be installed from github via the remotes package

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("CTU-Bern/btabler")

Note that remotes treats any warnings (e.g. that a certain package was built under a different version of R) as errors. If you see such an error, run the following line and try again:

Sys.setenv(R_REMOTES_NO_ERRORS_FROM_WARNINGS = "true")

Using the package

Load it as usual:

library(btabler)

Create your tables via whatever means and pass them to the btable function:

df <- data.frame(name = c("", "Row 1", "Row2"),
                 out_t = c("Total", "t1", "t1"),
                 out_1 = c("Group 1", "g11", "g12"), 
                 out_2 = c("Group 2", "g21", "g22"))
btable(df, nhead = 1, nfoot = 0, caption = "Table1")

btable returns the latex code for the table you passed, which can be easily used with sweave to create tables in reports.

knitr::include_graphics("man/figures/basic.png")

Column widths can also be modified using the aligntot argument:

btable(df, nhead = 1, nfoot = 0, 
       caption = "Table1", 
       aligntot = "p{3cm}p{1.5cm}p{1.5cm}p{1.5cm}")

knitr::include_graphics("man/figures/aligntot_width.png")

If the table is does not respect the widths entered in aligntot, the rulelength argument can be used to fix the overall table width.

Requirements for the header

btabler tables are only interpretable by LaTeX when a few packages are loaded. It is recommended to place the following code in the header of your .tex file or .Rmd

# .tex
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{array}

# .Rmd
header-includes:
  - \usepackage{longtable}
  - \usepackage{booktabs}
  - \usepackage{float}
  - \usepackage{array}

Other things like custom column types can also be added to the header (see the vignette for an example)

vignette("btabler")

VIGNETTE

btabler is a wrapper for the xtable package which adds some new functionality for merging headers, adding footers etc.

To demonstrate how btabler

df <- data.frame(name = c("", "Row 1", "Row2"),
                 out_t = c("Total", "t1", "t1"),
                 out_1 = c("Group 1", "g11", "g12"), 
                 out_2 = c("Group 2", "g21", "g22"))

btable(df, nhead = 1, nfoot = 0, caption = "Table1")

In the compiled PDF, this looks substantially better of course...

knitr::include_graphics("fig/basic.png")

Headers and footers

Where there are multiple header lines, the nhead argument can be used and any neighboring cells in those first rows will be merged.

df <- data.frame(name = c("", "", "Row 1", "Row2"),
                 out_t = c("Total", "mean (sd)", "t1", "t1"),
                 out_1 = c("Group 1", "mean (sd)", "g11", "g12"),
                 out_2 = c("Group 2", "mean (sd)", "g21", "g22"))
btable(df, nhead = 2, nfoot = 0, caption = "Table1")

knitr::include_graphics("fig/header.png")

btable italicizes the second row of the header by default. This can be changed via the head_it argument:

btable(df, nhead = 2, nfoot = 0, caption = "Table1", 
       head_it = NA)

knitr::include_graphics("fig/head_it.png")

Likewise, aggregation of the header can also be turned of

btable(df, nhead = 2, nfoot = 0, caption = "Table1", 
       head_it = NA, aggregate = FALSE)

knitr::include_graphics("fig/aggregate.png")

Footers included in the dataframe can also be added:

df1 <- data.frame(name = c("", "Row 1", "Row2", "*Footer"),
                 out_t = c("Total", "t1", "t1", ""),
                 out_1 = c("Group 1", "g11", "g12", ""),
                 out_2 = c("Group 2", "g21", "g22", ""))
btable(df1, nhead=1, nfoot=1, caption="Table1")

knitr::include_graphics("fig/footer.png")

Alignment

Alignment can be changed via the aligntot argument. For example, we could specify that the first column be left aligned and all other columns should be right aligned:

btable(df, nhead = 1, nfoot = 0, caption = "Table1", aligntot = "lrrr")

knitr::include_graphics("fig/align.png")

Custom column types

It's possible to create new column types in LaTeX and use them in btabler.

The following creates a new column type if put in the LaTeX or Rmd header

# .tex
\newcolumntype{P}[1]{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{#1}}

# .Rmd
header-includes:
  ... # other requirements
  - \newcolumntype{P}[1]{>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{#1}}

This can then be used in btable in the aligntot argument (note that xtable warns about non-standard, adding warning = FALSE to the chunk header might be useful...)

btable(df, nhead = 1, nfoot = 0, 
       caption = "Table1", 
       aligntot = "P{3cm}P{1.5cm}P{1.5cm}P{1.5cm}")

knitr::include_graphics("fig/customcols.png")

CTU-Bern/btabler documentation built on Aug. 19, 2024, 4:58 a.m.