colspan and rowspan

[ChengQian123]

Hi Max,

htmlTable() creates three-line tables as its default results. But i want to draw all td borders in my tables.
My table using this function is below:

		2015				2016				2017
TypeName		mean	sd	cv		mean	sd	cv		mean	sd	cv
Type1		98.73	11.02	0.11		101.22	10.41	0.10		95.22	13.00	0.14
Type2		98.53	26.28	0.27		93.11	27.47	0.30		90.45	26.85	0.30
Type3		98.16	26.51	0.27		98.25	27.61	0.28		96.37	28.13	0.29
Type4		66.63	14.94	0.22		64.30	12.13	0.19		61.86	11.91	0.19
Type5		74.66	12.38	0.17		49.27	13.57	0.28		58.46	13.40	0.23
Type6		54.64	12.64	0.23		52.98	12.67	0.24		44.16	11.84	0.27
Type7		487.38	98.28	0.20		458.54	89.22	0.19		446.51	86.89	0.19

Blank columns among cgroups are not what i want.
So,two questions:

1. How can i do rowspan in htmlTable(),e.g. "TypeName" in my table.
2. How can i drop the Blank columns among cgroups.

And this is what i want:

TypeName	2015			2016			2017
	mean	sd	cv	mean	sd	cv	mean	sd	cv
Type1	98.73	11.02	0.11	101.22	10.41	0.10	95.22	13.00	0.14
Type2	98.53	26.28	0.27	93.11	27.47	0.30	90.45	26.85	0.30
Type3	98.16	26.51	0.27	98.25	27.61	0.28	96.37	28.13	0.29
Type4	66.63	14.94	0.22	64.30	12.13	0.19	61.86	11.91	0.19
Type5	74.66	12.38	0.17	49.27	13.57	0.28	58.46	13.40	0.23
Type6	54.64	12.64	0.23	52.98	12.67	0.24	44.16	11.84	0.27
Type7	487.38	98.28	0.20	458.54	89.22	0.19	446.51	86.89	0.19

So how can i do that using htmlTable()?

Thanks so much!
Qian

[gforge]

The empty column is a odd design choice that I've made on purpose. I like underlining the headers and this was the only way that I got it to work. The table you suggest is actually rather trivial to generate and perhaps some of the simpler table packages have a better solution. You could try to do str_replace on "<td>&nbsp;</td>" but it's only a hack.

[ChengQian123]

Thanks for your solutions. I think you can consider embed the option dropping empty column in this function. ：)

[gforge]

I have nothing against adding this functionality but I currently lack the time for implementing this. Help is always welcome and it shouldn't be that tricky if you want to give it a try. Basically:

1. add an argument, e.g. skip_separator_cols (I think drop_empty_cols will be confusing as most don't reflect over these columns.
2. write a test case for checking both with and without the empty columns. Check that the colspans are correct and that the empty columns appear.
3. look for anything that has the <td>&nbsp;</td>.
4. Fix colspan so that it ignores the empty columns.

Push everything to the develop branch and then do a pull request.

[raredd]

Doesn't this do it? I'm not positive how colspan needs to be fixed.

library('htmlTable')

ht <- ht0 <- htmlTable(
  head(mtcars),
  cgroup = c('', 'asdf', '', 'asdf'),
  n.cgroup = c(2,4,2,3)
)
ht <- gsub('<t[dh][^>]+?>&nbsp;</t[hd]>', '', ht)
ht
ht0