Customization and Configuration

ConsoleTables provides several options to customize the appearance and behavior of your tables.

Using the Configure Method

The most common way to apply options is through the fluent .Configure() method, which gives you access to a ConsoleTableOptions object.

var rows = Enumerable.Repeat(new Something(), 2);
ConsoleTable.From(rows)
    .Configure(o => o.NumberAlignment = Alignment.Right)
    .Write();

Configuring Options via Constructor

You can also pass a ConsoleTableOptions object directly to the constructor. This is particularly useful for setting options before adding rows manually.

var options = new ConsoleTableOptions
{
    Columns = new[] { "one", "two", "three" },
    EnableCount = false
};

var noCountTable = new ConsoleTable(options);
noCountTable.AddRow(1, 2, 3).Write();

Available Options

Number Alignment

By default, all columns are left-aligned. You can right-align numeric types when creating a table from a collection of objects (From<T>).

• o.NumberAlignment = Alignment.Right

public class User { public string Name { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } }
var users = new List<User> { new User { Name = "Alexandre", Age = 36 } };

// Default (Left-aligned)
ConsoleTable.From(users).Write();

// Right-aligned numbers
ConsoleTable.From(users)
    .Configure(o => o.NumberAlignment = Alignment.Right)
    .Write();

Output (Right-aligned):

 ------------------- 
 | Name      | Age |
 ------------------- 
 | Alexandre |  36 |
 ------------------- 

 Count: 1

Disabling the Row Count

To remove the Count: X footer from the output, set EnableCount to false.

• o.EnableCount = false

var table = new ConsoleTable("A", "B");
table.AddRow(1, 2)
     .Configure(o => o.EnableCount = false)
     .Write();

Output:

 ------- 
 | A | B |
 ------- 
 | 1 | 2 |
 ------- 

Width and Word Breaking

For cells containing long strings, ConsoleTables can automatically wrap the text to fit within a specified maximum width.

• table.MaxWidth = 40;: Sets the maximum character width for any single cell before wrapping occurs. The default is 40.
• table.SetWordBreakDelimiter(' ');: Sets the character to use for word breaking. The default is a space .

var table = new ConsoleTable("Column A", "Column B");
table.MaxWidth = 15;
table.AddRow("This is a very long sentence that needs to be wrapped.", "Short");
table.Write();

Custom Output Target

By default, table.Write() outputs to Console.Out. You can redirect this to any System.IO.TextWriter, such as a StringWriter or a file stream.

• o.OutputTo = myTextWriter;

This is useful for capturing table output as a string or for logging.

using System.IO;

var testWriter = new StringWriter();
var table = new ConsoleTable("Data");
table.AddRow("Hello")
     .Configure(o => o.OutputTo = testWriter)
     .Write();

string tableAsString = testWriter.ToString();
// Now tableAsString contains the full formatted table text.