Awesome Asciidoctor: Change Striping In Tables

Creating tables with Asciidoctor is easy. When we convert our Asciidoc markup to HTML the rows of the body of the table are striped. The even rows have a slightly darker background color and the odd rows don't have a background color. We can change how the body rows are striped using the table attribute stripes. We can use the values even, odd, all or none. Instead of using the table attribute stripes we can also set the role on the table. The prefix of the role name is stripes- followed by the same values as we can use with the attribute stripes.

In the following example markup we define four table with different striping:

= Tables
:nofooter:

.No striping
// Alternative to stripes attributes is
// setting role "stripes-none" as [.stripes-none,cols="1,2"].
[stripes=none,cols="1,2"]
|===
| Name | Description

| Asciidoctor
| *Awesome* way to write documentation

| Micronaut
| Low resource usage and fast startup micro services
|===

.All rows
// Alternative to stripes attributes is
// setting role "stripes-all" as [.stripes-all,cols="1,2"].
[stripes=all,cols="1,2"]
|===
| Name | Description

| Asciidoctor
| *Awesome* way to write documentation

| Micronaut
| Low resource usage and fast startup micro services
|===

.Odd rows
// Alternative to stripes attributes is
// setting role "stripes-odd" as [.stripes-odd,cols="1,2"].
[stripes=odd,cols="1,2"]
|===
| Name | Description

| Asciidoctor
| *Awesome* way to write documentation

| Micronaut
| Low resource usage and fast startup micro services
|===

.Even rows (default)
// Alternative to stripes attributes is
// setting role "stripes-even" as [.stripes-even,cols="1,2"].
[stripes=even,cols="1,2"]
|===
| Name | Description

| Asciidoctor
| *Awesome* way to write documentation

| Micronaut
| Low resource usage and fast startup micro services
|===

When we convert this markup to HTML we get the following result:

Written with Asciidoctor 2.0.2.

Awesome Asciidoctor: Using Tab Separated Data In A Table

In a previous post we learned how to use data in CSV and DSV format. Recently we can also include tab separated values (TSV) in a Asciidoctor table. We must set the table attribute format to the value tsv. The data can be inside the document, but also defined in an external file which we add with the include macro.

In the following example markup we have a table with inline tab separated values. A second table includes an external file with tab delimited values:

= Tables

Using the `format` attribute value `tsv` we can
use tab-delimited data for table data.

== TSV table

[format=tsv, options="header"]
|===
Writing tools Awesomeness
Asciidoctor Oh yeah!
MS Word  No!
|===

== Table with external data

// We have an external file with 
// tab-delimited values.

[%header,format=tsv]
|===
include::tools.tsv[]
|===

When we convert our Asciidoctor markup to HTML we get the following result:

Written with Asciidoctor 1.5.6.1.

Awesome Asciidoctor: Nested Tables

Defining tables in Asciidoctor is very easy. The start and end of the table are defined by |===. But if we want to add a new table to a table cell we cannot use the same syntax. To define a nested table we must replace the | separator with !. So instead of |=== to indicate the table boundaries we use !===. Also the cell separators are now ! instead of |. Finally we must make sure the table cell or column supports Asciidoc markup, so the table is properly created. We must configure the cell or column with a so the nested table is created.

In the following example Asciidoctor markup we have a simple table with a nested table in the second column and row. Notice we can still apply all table configuration to the nested table as well:

= Tables

== Nested tables

To nest a table in a table we must
use `!` as table separator instead of `|`.
Also the type of the column or cell
must be set to `a` so Asciidoc markup
is processed.

[cols="1,2a"]
|===
| Col 1 | Col 2

| Cell 1.1
| Cell 1.2

| Cell 2.1
| Cell 2.2

[cols="2,1"]
!===
! Col1 ! Col2

! C11
! C12

!===

|===

When we run Asciidoctor to create HTML for this markup we get the following result:

Written with Asciidoctor 1.5.5.