Today, I asked on Mastodon if anyone knew of a good solution for generating a Markdown table from a Django queryset. Typically, people want to convert markdown into HTML, but this was a case where I needed to export data from Django to a static website.
Not missing a beat, Katie McLaughlin recommended the python-tabulate library, which is what I was looking for.
Since I was short on time tonight, I asked ChatGPT to:
- Write a queryset to markdown function using the Python tabulate library.
- Add Python types support (because it’s 2024)
- Rewrite the docstring
Once the code looked right, I loaded up my local copy of Django News Jobs, and I created a quick Django management command.
django-click is my go-to library for quickly writing CLI apps or what Django calls a management command. django-click reduces the boilerplate needed to write a management command down to one import, one decorator, and one function, and you get the best of the Python click library with everything Django has to offer.
# management/commands/table.py
import djclick as click
from django.db.models.query import QuerySet
from tabulate import tabulate
from jobs.models import JobListing
def queryset_to_markdown(queryset: QuerySet, fields: list[str] | None = None) -> str:
"""
Convert a Django queryset to a markdown table using the tabulate library.
Args:
queryset (QuerySet): The Django queryset to convert into a markdown table.
fields (list[str] | None, optional): A list of strings specifying the model fields to include in the table.
If None, all fields from the model will be included. Defaults to None.
Returns:
str: A string representing the markdown table formatted according to GitHub-flavored Markdown.
"""
# If fields are not specified, use all fields from the model
if fields is None:
fields = [field.name for field in queryset.model._meta.fields]
# Prepare data for tabulation
data = []
for obj in queryset:
row = [getattr(obj, field) for field in fields]
data.append(row)
# Generate markdown table
markdown_table = tabulate(data, headers=fields, tablefmt="github")
return markdown_table
@click.command()
def command():
job_listings = JobListing.objects.all().active().order_by("-published")
print(queryset_to_markdown(job_listings, fields=["title", "employer_name"]))
Running python manage.py table gave me the following table. Please note: I removed the employer_name column to fit the output in my article.
| title | |-----------------------------------------------------| | Software Engineer (Terraso) | | Django Fellow | | Senior Django Developer for Boutique Digital Agency | | Software Engineer | | Business Systems Analyst | | Python Django E-Commerce Full Stack | | Principal Software Engineer | | Michigan Online, Software Engineer | | Full Stack Python Developer | | Senior Backend Developer - Supportsite Team | | Python Backend Developer | | Python / Django Developer (f/m/d) | | Full Stack Python Developer | | Software Engineer - Ubuntu Systems Management | | Senior Python/Django Engineer |
Overall, I’m happy with this approach. Django is an excellent framework for quickly prototyping and solving these problems.
I decided to write a management command instead of a view because markdown tables are very readable from the command line. I plan to convert it to a Django view to automate embedding tables like this into other projects.
