Tr3v.Net » TableBuilder

Firstly you need to download a copy of Tr3v.TableBuilder, there are 2 versions available one is for C# 2.0 and one is for C# 3.0 (the C# 3.0 version uses object initialisers which are a new 3.0 feature).
Once you have downloaded a copy, you will need to unzip the TableBuilder.cs file and add it to your project.

// NOTE: I'm using C# 3.0 syntax.

// Instantiate a new TableBuilder.
TableBuilder tableBuilder = new TableBuilder { RightAlignNumericColumns = true };

/* NOTE: We can access any of the properties of the System.Web.UI.WebControls.Table through the TableBuilder.Table property. */
tableBuilder.Table.Width = 250;
tableBuilder.Table.BorderColor = System.Drawing.Color.Black;
tableBuilder.Table.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.Solid;
tableBuilder.Table.BorderWidth = 1;

// Add a header row to the table.
tableBuilder.AddHeaderRow("Product", "Type", "Price");

// Add some content rows to the table.
tableBuilder.AddRow("Apple", "Fruit", "£0.22");
tableBuilder.AddRow("Orange", "Fruit", "£0.14");
tableBuilder.AddRow("Chair", "Furnature", "£34.99");
tableBuilder.AddRow("Discount", "-", "-£0.95");
tableBuilder.AddRow("£34.40");

// Add the table to the page.
Page.Controls.Add(tableBuilder.Table);

The AddRow and AddHeaderRow methods both return the TableBuilder instance so you can also write the code like this:

tableBuilder.AddHeaderRow("Product", "Type", "Price")
.AddRow("Apple", "Fruit", "£0.22")
.AddRow("Orange", "Fruit", "£0.14")
.AddRow("Chair", "Furnature", "£34.99")
.AddRow("Discount", "-", "-£0.95")
.AddRow("£34.40");

As you can see, the table is output with the numeric columns aligned to the right, also notice that the "total" column spans the 3 columns.

<table border="0" style="border-color:Black;border-width:1px;border-style:Solid;width:250px;">
    <tr>
        <th>Product</th><th>Type</th><th>Price</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Apple</td><td>Fruit</td><td style="text-align: right;">£0.22</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Orange</td><td>Fruit</td><td style="text-align: right;">£0.14</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Chair</td><td>Furnature</td><td style="text-align: right;">£34.99</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Discount</td><td>-</td><td style="text-align: right;">-£0.95</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td colspan="3" style="text-align: right;">£34.40</td>
    </tr>
</table>

The html output is standard, using <th> tags for the header cells and <td> tags for the standard cells. This allows you to apply css styles to the table.

I recently received a query regarding styling the html table using css, so here's a quick sample:

Aditional Point, if you are styling using CSS and have rows with different numbers of cells in, make sure that all rows with less than the highest number of cells have empty cells otherwise borders and background colours will not be set.

So for example in the following sample:

.AddRow("Column1", "Column2", "Column3")
.AddRow("Column1", "Column2")
.AddRow("Column1", "Column2", "Column3")

In this scenario, replace the code in line 2 with

.AddRow("Column1", "Column2", String.Empty)

Date	Version	Notes
22/08/2008	1.0.0.3	Updates Added TableBuilder.Id property which gets or sets the html id of the table (TableBuilder.Id = "products"; outputs <table id="products">) Added TableBuilder.CssClass property which gets or sets the css class for the table (TableBuilder.CssClass = "productTable"; outputs <table class="productTable">) Right align columns now right aligns columns that: + Only contains numeric text (e.g. "2344" would be right aligned, but "T2344" would not). + Contains a currency identifier (e.g "£5.99" or "$5.99") £ and $ are the 2 currently supported, however to add others, just extend the if statement in the RightAlignRowCells method. + Codebase has been internally refactored and now passes all default Microsoft StyleCop tests. (Method signatures have not changed so if you update to the latest version of the source code, existing code that uses TableBuilder should not break).
30/05/2008	1.0.0.2	Updated - enhancement: AddRow and AddHeaderRow both return the instance of the TableBuilder.
10/04/2008	1.0.0.1	Updated - fixed bug: columns with numerics and characters are right aligned.
29/02/2008	1.0.0.0	Initial Build

Tr3v.TableBuilder