outfancy

Table printing and Line plotting in Terminal

What is it?

Outfancy is a Python library for printing tables and charts in the terminal. It's a quick way to visualize data when you don't have a GUI, and it integrates easily into your programs. You can install it with uv or pip and use it anywhere.

This was the first library I ever built when I was 16 :). It's been modernized to support Python 3.10+, fix bugs, add type hints, improve logging, and enhance performance, but the original style is still there: raw, exploratory teenage code.

Documentation

• DeepWiki Docs - Comprehensive documentation
• LOGGING.md - Logging system configuration and usage
• logging_example.py - Practical logging examples

Installation

Install as a library (uv)

uv add outfancy

Install as a CLI tool (uv)

uv tool install outfancy

Install with pip

pip install outfancy

Features

• Quick table printing - Print formatted tables in the terminal with automatic column width detection
• LineChart plotting - Create line charts with linear interpolation
• Customizable formatting - Configure separators, widths, and column priorities
• Real-time column rearrangement - Dynamically reorder columns
• Auto-generated labels - Automatic label creation above tables
• Oneline printing - Single-line updates for real-time applications
• Color support - Add ANSI colors to table fields
• Type hints - Full type annotation support for better IDE integration
• Configurable logging - Flexible logging system with multiple severity levels
• Data type auto-detection - Automatic detection of ID, name, date, time, value, and description columns

Quick Start

Basic Table

import outfancy.table

table = outfancy.table.Table()
dataset = [(1, 'Marie'), (2, 'Joseph')]
print(table.render(dataset))

Line Chart

import outfancy.chart
from math import sin

line_chart = outfancy.chart.LineChart()
dataset = [(i, sin(i)) for i in range(10)]
line_chart.plot(dataset)
print(line_chart.render(color=True))

Large Table with Pagination

from outfancy.table import LargeTable

large_table = LargeTable()
large_dataset = [(i, f'User {i}', f'user{i}@example.com') for i in range(100)]
print(large_table.render(large_dataset))

Empty State Customization

from outfancy.table import Table, LargeTable

t = Table()
t.set_empty_string('No data available')

lt = LargeTable()
lt.set_empty_string('No data available')

This sets the string displayed when a table cell has no value.

CLI (Added in 2026)

After installing outfancy, the outfancy command is available in your terminal.

Table

Render tabular data from stdin or a file:

# CSV from stdin (first row used as headers)
printf "id,name,value\n1,foo,100\n2,bar,200" | outfancy table

# From a file
outfancy table data.csv

# TSV input
cat data.tsv | outfancy table --tsv

# JSON input (array of objects or array of arrays)
cat data.json | outfancy table --json

# Custom headers
printf "1,foo,100\n2,bar,200" | outfancy table --labels "ID,Name,Value"

# Hide headers
cat data.csv | outfancy table --no-labels

# Select and reorder columns
cat data.csv | outfancy table --order 0,2,1

# Custom column separator
cat data.csv | outfancy table --separator " | "

# Equal width for all columns
cat data.csv | outfancy table --width-equal

# Use first row as column headers (CSV/TSV)
cat data.csv | outfancy table --has-headers

Chart

Render x,y pairs as a line chart:

# From stdin (one x,y pair per line)
printf "1,10\n2,25\n3,15\n4,30\n5,20" | outfancy chart

# With title and colors
printf "1,10\n2,25\n3,15\n4,30\n5,20" | outfancy chart --name "Sales" --color

# From a file
outfancy chart data.csv

Demo

Run the interactive demo:

outfancy-demo

Version

Print the installed version:

outfancy --version

Development

Development installation (pip)

git clone https://github.com/carlosplanchon/outfancy.git
cd outfancy
pip install -e .

Development installation (uv)

git clone https://github.com/carlosplanchon/outfancy.git
cd outfancy
uv venv
uv pip install -e "."

Running tests

Install the development dependencies (adds pytest and pytest-cov):

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
# or with pip:
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Run the test suite:

# Run all tests
pytest

# Run with verbose output
pytest -v

# Run tests with coverage
pytest --cov=outfancy --cov-report=term-missing

The tests live in tests/ and characterize the current behavior of the library (the Table, Oneline, LargeTable and LineChart classes, the CLI, and the pure helpers in widgets/window/colors), so any change that alters the rendered output is caught early.

Logging Configuration

Outfancy uses a configurable logging system. By default, only WARNING and above messages are shown:

import logging
import outfancy.table

# Enable debug logging
logging.getLogger('outfancy').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# Create table with debug output
table = outfancy.table.Table()

See LOGGING.md for detailed logging configuration options.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

1. Report bugs - Open an issue describing the problem
2. Suggest features - Share your ideas for improvements
3. Submit pull requests - Fix bugs or implement features
4. Improve documentation - Help make the docs clearer
5. Write tests - Add test coverage for edge cases

Code style

• Follow existing code patterns
• Add type hints to new functions
• Include tests for new features
• Update documentation as needed

Examples & Demos

• Funny demo with colors - Colorful table demonstration

Line Chart Example

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details