Methods for tables with rmarkdown

tables.Rmd

---
title: "A few methods for making tables in rmarkdown"
output: html_document
---

Updates: 

Packages that have appeared since my original look into this, and seem great:

https://github.com/yihui/printr
https://github.com/jalapic/simpletable
https://github.com/renkun-ken/formattable

Original effort:

Most of them are a bit irritating because of limitations on customising table and column widths. The last method offers the most flexibility and produces quite nice output.

The code for this is online at https://gist.github.com/benmarwick/8ad99f35d5e4caa06492

```{r}
my_data <- head(iris)
names(my_data) <- c(letters[1:ncol(iris)])

```

```{r results='asis'}
library("knitr")
kable(my_data)
```

```{r results='asis'}
library("xtable")
print(xtable(my_data), type = "html", include.rownames=FALSE, html.table.attributes=list("border='0' cellpadding='5' "))
```

```{r, results = 'asis'}
library(xtable)
print(xtable(my_data), type = 'html')
```

```{r results = 'asis'}
library(xtable)
print(xtable(my_data), type = 'html', html.table.attributes = '')
```

```{r results='asis'}
library("pander")
pandoc.table(my_data)
```

```{r results='asis'}
library("pander")
pandoc.table(my_data, split.cells = 5)
```

```{r, results = 'asis'}
pander::panderOptions('table.split.table', 350)
pander::pandoc.table(my_data, style="rmarkdown")
```

```{r results='asis'}
library("ascii")
print(ascii(my_data), type = 'pandoc')
```

```{r}
library("htmlTable")
htmlTable(my_data, col.rgroup = c("none", "#F7F7F7"))
```

```{r results='asis'}
library(hwriter)
hwrite(my_data, border=0)
```

This one is the most useful, and has a nice guide to customisation here: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~gpau/hwriter/


```{r results='asis'}
library(hwriter)
cat(hwrite(my_data, border = 0, center=TRUE, table.frame='void', width='300px', table.style='padding: 50px', row.names=FALSE, row.style=list('font-weight:bold')))
```