import sys

# Credit to Hugh Bothwell from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5084743/how-to-print-pretty-string-output-in-python
class TablePrinter(object):
    "Print a list of dicts as a table"
    def __init__(self, fmt, sep=' ', ul=None):
        """        
        @param fmt: list of tuple(heading, key, width)
                        heading: str, column label
                        key: dictionary key to value to print
                        width: int, column width in chars
        @param sep: string, separation between columns
        @param ul: string, character to underline column label, or None for no underlining
        """
        super(TablePrinter,self).__init__()
        self.fmt   = str(sep).join('{lb}{0}:{1}{rb}'.format(key, width, lb='{', rb='}') for heading,key,width in fmt)
        self.head  = {key:heading for heading,key,width in fmt}
        self.ul    = {key:str(ul)*width for heading,key,width in fmt} if ul else None
        self.width = {key:width for heading,key,width in fmt}

    def row(self, data):
        if sys.version_info < (3,):
            return self.fmt.format(**{ k:str(data.get(k,''))[:w] for k,w in self.width.iteritems() })
        else:
            return self.fmt.format(**{ k:str(data.get(k,''))[:w] for k,w in self.width.items() })

    def __call__(self, dataList):
        _r = self.row
        res = [_r(data) for data in dataList]
        res.insert(0, _r(self.head))
        if self.ul:
            res.insert(1, _r(self.ul))
        return '\n'.join(res)