Formatting IEnumerable<T> as table

[scottstephens]

In the initial versions of this the default formatter for an IEnumerable<T> was a table display, with each row corresponding to one element of the IEnumerable<T>, and each column corresponding to a field or property of T. It was featured in the preview 1 launch announcement to display the groupofheros variable.

It seems this is no longer the default. Is there any way to do this in newer versions? It's pretty useful to be able to look at a collection that way.

[jonsequitur]

We're talking about bringing this back as a configurable behavior. The nested tables were very hard to use when the objects in the list were of different types, so we aligned it more to the watch-style UI in Visual Studio.

[jonsequitur]

One thing you can do is convert the objects to a TabularDataResource and then display that. Here's an example with the new formatter and then the TabularDataResource approach:

[scottstephens]

Great, thanks!

I think calling a method to trigger the table display is very usable, I don't feel the need for a config option to change the default, even though I almost always want table output.

It could use a mention in https://github.com/dotnet/interactive/blob/main/docs/display-output-csharp.md, I'll send you a pull request for that.

It does seem important enough that a more concise name (.Table() or .DisplayTable() maybe) and/or inclusion in the namespace by default would be appropriate.

[jonsequitur]

Agreed. Something with clearer ergonomics and better discoverability would be better. I like the suggestion of DisplayTable because it will be more discoverable in IntelliSense.

[mlaily]

If I may add my two cents, I guess having a displayTable function for F# would be nice too, to complement the existing display!

[jonsequitur]

The IEnumerable<T>.DisplayTable extension method has been added to make this more straightforward. More details here: #3098.