Organizing Data In Table: A Quick Guide

We can use tables to structure data in columns and rows. The table is the HTML way to lay out the data. The CSS way to create the layout on the web page is CSS float, flexbox, and CSS grid.

We cover an example to understand how to create a table on the web page. You can view the HTML table example at the below codepen link:

https://codepen.io/taimoorsattar/pen/NWpdwbp

For example, we can create a table in HTML for customer’s grocery item bill as below:

<table border="3" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0">
   <caption>Grocery Items Bill</caption>
   <thead>
      <colgroup>
         <col width="60%">
         <col width="20%">
         <col width="20%" span="1" style="background-color:#f1f1f1;">
      </colgroup>
      <tr>
         <th align="left" class="col-item-name">Item Name</th>
         <th align="center" class="col-quantity">Quantity</th>
         <th align="center" class="col-price">Price</th>
      </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody>
      <tr>
         <td>Potatoes</td>
         <td align="center">51</td>
         <td align="center">$1.00</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>Nuts</td>
         <td align="center">20</td>
         <td align="center">$5</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>Onions</td>
         <td align="center">4</td>
         <td align="center">$3.00</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>Very long awkwardly named yet still delicious item here</td>
         <td align="center">4</td>
         <td align="center">$3.00</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>Carrots</td>
         <td align="center">12</td>
         <td align="center">$2.99</td>
      </tr>
   </tbody>
   <tfoot>
      <td class="price_txt" scope="col" colspan="2">Total Price</td>
      <td align="center" >$33.79</td>
   </tfoot>
</table>

The above code creates an HTML table on the page (without CSS) as below:

To structure the HTML table, we have to use proper tags and attributes in the code. Some of the HTML tags that we can use in the table are described below.

Also, in the code, we use attributes to assign properties for the HTML table. Some of the attributes are described below.

Style the HTML

To style the Grocery Items Bill table, we can use the below CSS.

caption {
	font-size: 1.5rem;
	margin-bottom: 1.2rem;
}

table {
	table-layout: auto;
	border-spacing: 0; /*  Same as cellspacing="0" */
	border-collapse: collapse;
	width: 450px;
	margin: 40px auto;
}

table th,
table td {
	border: 1px solid black;
	vertical-align: top;
}

/* No need for this */
.col-item-name {
	width: 60%;
}

/* No need for this */
.col-quantity,
.col-price {
	width: 20%;
}

table th {
	background-color: #869960;
	color: #fff;
	text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);
}

table tbody tr:nth-child(even) td {
	background-color: #dcdcdc;
}

.price_txt {
	text-align: right;
	font-weight: bold;
}

Rather than, using CSS to adjust the spacing of the table (e.g. CSS box model), we already specify it using HTML attributes.

Note that due to compatibility issue, if some of the attributes is not supported, we can using CSS to style elements. In the above example, we use both CSS and HTML attributes to assign properties/styles to elements.

Also, in the above CSS, we use the nth-child pseudo-selector to target/style even table rows.