Formatting html table in R

Question 1

The idea is to :

Create a css where you format "stylize" your table using some css features
Create a html table using print.xtable
Create a file including a link to the css file and the created html table

So here the code creating the "res.html" file:

## a dummy data.frame used as an example
library(xtable)
n <- data.frame(x = c(1,1,1,1,1), y = c(0,1,0,1,0))
## the html header  
## here I am using a link to mystyle.css 
html.head <- paste("<head>" ,
             '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css"/>',
             "</head>",sep='\n')
## the html body
html.table <- paste(print(xtable(n),type='html','res.html'), 
                    collapse = "\n")
html.body <- paste("<body>", html.table,"</body>")
## the html file
write(paste(html.head,html.body,sep='\n'),"res.html")

the syle sheet file(mystyle.css) can contain be something like this :

table {
   max-width: 95%;
   border: 1px solid #ccc;
}

th {
  background-color: #000000; // background for table header 
  color: #ffffff;
}

td
{
   text-align:right;        // justify column
   background-color: #FF0000;
}

Question 2

with xtable you can also give a class or id (or inline css) in the <TABLE> tag with the html.table.attributes argument. an example:

print(xtable(head(iris, 10)), type = "html", include.rownames = F, 
      html.table.attributes="class='table-bordered'")

this returns:

<!-- html table generated in R 3.0.1 by xtable 1.7-3 package -->
<!-- Fri Jul 11 12:18:15 2014 -->
<TABLE class='table table-bordered'>
<TR> <TH> Sepal.Length </TH> <TH> Sepal.Width </TH> <TH> Petal.Length </TH> <TH> Petal.Width </TH> <TH> Species </TH>  </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 5.10 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.50 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 4.90 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.00 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 4.70 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.20 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.30 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 4.60 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.10 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.50 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 5.00 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.60 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 5.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.90 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.70 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.40 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 4.60 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.30 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 5.00 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.50 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 4.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 2.90 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.40 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.20 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD align="right"> 4.90 </TD> <TD align="right"> 3.10 </TD> <TD align="right"> 1.50 </TD> <TD align="right"> 0.10 </TD> <TD> setosa </TD> </TR>
</TABLE>

this class or id can be used in the ccs file, this can be useful if you create multiple tables for the html page

In addition you can use the print.results=FALSE argument to catch the character vector and use functions from the stringr package e.g. str_replace(), str_replace_all() to add classes, id's or inline css to other places in the table e.g. the <TD> tag