New in Symfony 4.4: Horizontal Tables and Definition Lists in Console Commands

October 21, 2019 • Published by Javier Eguiluz

Warning: This post is about an unsupported Symfony version. Some of this information may be out of date. Read the most recent Symfony Docs.

Contributed by Grégoire Pineau in #32742

The Console component includes some features to output tables and configure them in many different ways. In Symfony 4.4 we've improved it with new types of tables.

Horizontal Tables

Consider the following table:

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        use Symfony\Component\Console\Command\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\Table;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;
// ...

class SomeCommand extends Command
{
    public function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
    {
        $table = new Table($output);
        $table
            ->setHeaders(['ISBN', 'Title', 'Author'])
            ->setRows([
                ['99921-58-10-7', 'Divine Comedy', 'Dante Alighieri'],
                ['9971-5-0210-0', 'A Tale of Two Cities', 'Charles Dickens'],
                ['960-425-059-0', 'The Lord of the Rings', 'J. R. R. Tolkien'],
                ['80-902734-1-6', 'And Then There Were None', 'Agatha Christie'],
            ])
        ;
        $table->render();
    }
}
    

This is displayed as:

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        +---------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| ISBN          | Title                    | Author           |
+---------------+--------------------------+------------------+
| 99921-58-10-7 | Divine Comedy            | Dante Alighieri  |
| 9971-5-0210-0 | A Tale of Two Cities     | Charles Dickens  |
| 960-425-059-0 | The Lord of the Rings    | J. R. R. Tolkien |
| 80-902734-1-6 | And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie  |
+---------------+--------------------------+------------------+
    

If you call to the new setHorizontal(bool $horizontal = true) method, the table is transformed into an "horizontal table", where the data is displayed in rows instead of columns:

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        $table
    ->setHeaders(['ISBN', 'Title', 'Author'])
    ->setRows([
        // ... the rows ...
    ])
    ->setHorizontal()
;
    

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        +--------+-----------------+----------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
| ISBN   | 99921-58-10-7   | 9971-5-0210-0        | 960-425-059-0         | 80-902734-1-6            |
| Title  | Divine Comedy   | A Tale of Two Cities | The Lord of the Rings | And Then There Were None |
| Author | Dante Alighieri | Charles Dickens      | J. R. R. Tolkien      | Agatha Christie          |
+--------+-----------------+----------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
    

When using the Symfony style for commands you can also use the horizontalTable() shortcut:

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        use Symfony\Component\Console\Style\SymfonyStyle;

protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
{
    $io = new SymfonyStyle($input, $output);
    $io->horizontalTable(
        ['ISBN', 'Title', 'Author'],
        [
            // ... the rows ...
        ]
    );
}
    

In Symfony 4.4 we've also added support for "definition lists", which are a set of key-value pairs, similar to HTML's <dl>. Symfony's definition lists are more flexible because they can include titles, separators, etc.

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        use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\TableSeparator;

$io->definitionList(
    ['Version' => '4.4.0'],
    ['Long-Term Support' => 'Yes'],
    new TableSeparator(),
    'Timeline',
    ['End of maintenance' => '11/2022'],
    ['End of life' => '11/2023']
);
    

This example is output as follows:

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        -------------------- ---------
 Version              4.4.0
 Long-Term Support    Yes
-------------------- ---------
 Timeline
 End of maintenance   11/2022
 End of life          11/2023
-------------------- ---------
    

Published in #Living on the edge

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