HTML Tables
HTML tables allow web developers to arrange data into rows and columns.
Example
| Company | Contact | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Alfreds Futterkiste | Maria Anders | Germany |
| Centro comercial Moctezuma | Francisco Chang | Mexico |
| Ernst Handel | Roland Mendel | Austria |
| Island Trading | Helen Bennett | UK |
| Laughing Bacchus Winecellars | Yoshi Tannamuri | Canada |
| Magazzini Alimentari Riuniti | Giovanni Rovelli | Italy |
Define an HTML Table
A table in HTML consists of table cells inside rows and columns
Output
Table Cells
Each table cell is defined by a <td> and a </td> tag.
td stands for table data.
Everything between <td> and </td> are the content of the table cell.
Example
<table>
<tr>
<td>Emil</td>
<td>Tobias</td>
<td>Linus</td>
</tr>
</table>
Note: table data elements are the data containers of the table.
They can contain all sorts of HTML elements; text, images, lists, other tables, etc.
Table Rows
Each table row starts with a <tr> and end with a </tr> tag.
tr stands for table row.
Example
<table>
<tr>
<td>Emil</td>
<td>Tobias</td>
<td>Linus</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16</td>
<td>14</td>
<td>10</td>
</tr>
</table>
You can have as many rows as you like in a table, just make sure that the number of cells are the same in each row.
Note: There are times where a row can have less or more cells than another. You will learn about that in a later chapter.
Table Headers
Sometimes you want your cells to be headers, in those cases use the <th> tag instead of the <td> tag:
By default, the text in <th> elements are bold and centered, but you can change that with CSS.
HTML Table Tags
| Tag | Description |
|---|---|
| <table> | Defines a table |
| <th> | Defines a header cell in a table |
| <tr> | Defines a row in a table |
| <td> | Defines a cell in a table |
| <caption> | Defines a table caption |
| <colgroup> | Specifies a group of one or more columns in a table for formatting |
| <col> | Specifies column properties for each column within a <colgroup> element |
| <thead> | Groups the header content in a table |
| <tbody> | Groups the body content in a table |
| <tfoot> | Groups the footer content in a table |
HTML Table Borders
HTML tables can have borders of different styles and shapes.
How To Add a Border
When you add a border to a table, you also add borders around each table cell:
To add a border, use the CSS border property on table, th, and td elements:
Example
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid black;
}
Output
Collapsed Table Borders
To avoid having double borders like in the example above, set the CSS border-collapse property to collapse.
This will make the borders collapse into a single border:
Example
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid black;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
Style Table Borders
If you set a background color of each cell, and give the border a white color (the same as the document background), you get the impression of an invisible border:
Example
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid white;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
th, td {
background-color: #96D4D4;
}
Round Table Borders
With the border-radius property, the borders get rounded corners:
Example
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid black;
border-radius: 10px;
}
