json2table

This is a simple Python package that allows a JSON object to be converted to HTML. It provides a convert function that accepts a dict instance and returns a string of converted HTML. For example, the simple JSON object {"key" : "value"} can be converted to HTML via:

>>> from json2table import convert
>>> json_object = {"key" : "value"}
>>> build_direction = "LEFT_TO_RIGHT"
>>> table_attributes = {"style" : "width:100%"}
>>> html = convert(json_object, build_direction=build_direction, table_attributes=table_attributes)
>>> print(html)
'<table style="width:100%"><tr><th>key</th><td>value</td></tr></table>'

The resulting table will resemble

key

value

More complex parsing is also possible. If a list of dict's provides the same list of keys, the generated HTML with gather items by key and display them in the same column.

{"menu": {
  "id": "file",
  "value": "File",
    "menuitem": [
      {"value": "New", "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"},
      {"value": "Open", "onclick": "OpenDoc()"},
      {"value": "Close", "onclick": "CloseDoc()"}
    ]
  }
}

Output:

menu	menuitem	onclick	value
		CreateNewDoc()	New
		OpenDoc()	Open
		CloseDoc()	Close
	id	file
	value	File

It might, however, be more readable if we were able to build the table from top-to-bottom instead of the default left-to-right. Changing the build_direction to "TOP_TO_BOTTOM" yields:

menu
menuitem		id	value
onclick	value	file	File
CreateNewDoc()	New
OpenDoc()	Open
CloseDoc()	Close

Table attributes are added via the table_attributes parameter. This parameter should be a dict of (key, value) pairs to apply to the table in the form key="value". If in our simple example before we additionally wanted to apply a class attribute of "table table-striped" we would use the following:

>>> table_attributes = {"style" : "width:100%", "class" : "table table-striped"}

and convert just as before:

>>> html = convert(json_object, build_direction=build_direction, table_attributes=table_attributes)

Details

This module provides a single convert function. It takes as input the JSON object (represented as a Python dict) and, optionally, a build direction and a dictionary of table attributes to customize the generated table:

convert(json_input, build_direction="LEFT_TO_RIGHT", table_attributes=None)

Parameters

json_input : dict

JSON object to convert into HTML.

build_direction : {"TOP_TO_BOTTOM", "LEFT_TO_RIGHT"}, optional

String denoting the build direction of the table. If "TOP_TO_BOTTOM" child objects will be appended below parents, i.e. in the subsequent row. If "LEFT_TO_RIGHT" child objects will be appended to the right of parents, i.e. in the subsequent column. Default is "LEFT_TO_RIGHT".

table_attributes : dict, optional

Dictionary of (key, value) pairs describing attributes to add to the table. Each attribute is added according to the template key="value". For example, the table { "border" : 1 } modifies the generated table tags to include border="1" as an attribute. The generated opening tag would look like <table border="1">. Default is None.

Returns

str

String of converted HTML.

Installation

The easiest method on installation is to use pip. Simply run:

>>> pip install json2table

If instead the repo was cloned, navigate to the root directory of the json2table package from the command line and execute:

>>> python setup.py install

Tests

In order to verify the code is working, from the command line navigate to the json2table root directory and run:

>>> python -m unittest tests.test_json2table