# @stenway/tbl > Serialize and deserialize TBL documents Latest version **1.1.1** (published 2023-09-04) · MIT license · 0 weekly downloads ## Install ```sh npm install @stenway/tbl pnpm add @stenway/tbl yarn add @stenway/tbl bun add @stenway/tbl ``` ## Health **Score 30/100 (F)** — status: abandoned. Positive: has types; esm support; no vulnerabilities; high quality score. Warnings: low downloads. Negative: abandoned; low maintenance score. ## Facts | | | |---|---| | Version | 1.1.1 | | Published | 2023-09-04 | | First published | 2022-10-29 | | Weekly downloads | 0 | | License | MIT | | TypeScript types | bundled | | Module format | ESM | | Dependencies | 2 | | Unpacked size | 46.8 KB | | Known vulnerabilities | 0 | | Install scripts | no | | GitHub stars | 6 | | Author | Stefan John | | Maintainers | stenway | | Keywords | table, csv, tsv, wsv, sml, meta data, data format, data, file format, binarytbl, btbl, tbl, binary table format, tables, tbls, binarysml, bsml, bs1 | ## Links - npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@stenway/tbl - Repository: https://github.com/Stenway/TBL-TS - Homepage: https://www.simpleml.com - Issues: https://github.com/Stenway/TBL-TS/issues - npm.io page: https://npm.io/package/@stenway/tbl ## Dependencies (2) - [@stenway/sml](https://npm.io/package/@stenway/sml.md) ^1.1.0 - [@stenway/reliabletxt](https://npm.io/package/@stenway/reliabletxt.md) ^1.1.0 ## Alternatives - [@lexical/table](https://npm.io/package/@lexical/table.md) — 3.0M weekly downloads - [mantine-datatable](https://npm.io/package/mantine-datatable.md) — 98.2K weekly downloads - [react-native-collapsible-tab-view](https://npm.io/package/react-native-collapsible-tab-view.md) — 70.6K weekly downloads - [@handsontable/vue3](https://npm.io/package/@handsontable/vue3.md) — 16.1K weekly downloads - [vuewordcloud](https://npm.io/package/vuewordcloud.md) — 7.2K weekly downloads ## Recent versions - 1.1.1 (latest) — 2023-09-04 - 1.1.0 — 2023-09-04 - 0.8.0 — 2023-08-22 - 0.7.0 — 2023-08-17 - 0.2.0 — 2023-05-18 - 0.1.0 — 2023-02-11 - 0.0.1 — 2022-10-29 ## README # TBL ## About TBL TBL is a data table format based on [SML](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@stenway/sml) - the Simple Markup Language. TBL is a modern and robust alternative to CSV. It has only a minimal set of rules and solves the main problems of CSV (watch [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGUlW6YgHjE) for more details on that). It's human friendly and can produce documents that are beautifully formatted and readable, even without specific tools, just opened in a text editor. Here is an example TBL document: ``` Table Meta Title "My Table" Description "This is a description of my table" End FirstName LastName Age PlaceOfBirth William Smith 30 Boston Olivia Jones 27 "San Francisco" Lucas Brown - Chicago # Age missing "James Elijah" Wilson 20 "New York City" Elizabeth Miller # Data missing Victoria Davis 22 Austin End ``` It has support for meta data, can differentiate between null values and empty values, and can contain comments. TBL **doesn't need to bother about encoding and decoding** anymore, because it relies on [ReliableTXT](https://www.reliabletxt.com), which takes care of that aspect (see also the NPM package [reliabletxt](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@stenway/reliabletxt)). A TBL document represents a single table. If you need to embed multiple tables into one document, TBLS comes into play: ``` Tables Table Column1 Column2 Value1 Value2 End Table ColumnA ColumnB ValueA ValueB End End ``` Find out what can be done with TBL and TBLS on the official [YouTube channel from Stenway](https://www.youtube.com/@stenway) and get started with videos like: * [TBL - A Simple Table Format with SML](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkASqYznmE8) * [TBLS - Multiple Tables in ONE File](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66qRRRVKbUI) * [Stenway Text File Format Stack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Z0mrcFeCg) * [RSS to TBLS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmYF6RkSpIM) * [Opening WSV, TBL and TBLS Files with LibreOffice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GbszMYAoM) * [Stop Using CSV !](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGUlW6YgHjE) * [Writing SML on a typewriter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa1yln1kH1k) ## About this package This package provides functionality to handle the **parsing and serialization** of TBL and TBLS documents. It also provides functionality to encode and decode the binary version of TBL, which is called BinaryTBL. The package **works both in the browser and Node.js**, because it does not require environment specific functionality. If you want to **read and write TBL files** using Node.js's file system module, you can use the **[tbl-io](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@stenway/tbl-io)** package. The **[tbl-browser](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@stenway/tbl-browser)** package on the other hand offers functionality to easily provide TBL documents as downloadable files. ## Getting started We first have to install the Stenway TBL package with the npm install command. ``` npm install @stenway/tbl ``` Then import the TblDocument class and create a new TblDocument object by calling the static parse method: ```ts import { TblDocument } from "@stenway/tbl" const document = TblDocument.parse("Table\nColumn1 Column2\nValue1 Value2\nEnd") console.log(document) ``` Add a new row with the addRow method like this: ```ts document.addRow(["ValueA", "ValueB"]) ``` More documentation about the other classes, methods and properties will follow. ## BinaryTBL BinaryTBL is the binary representation of TBL documents. It's based on BinarySML. You can encode a document to BinaryTBL with the toBinaryTbl method and decode it with the static method fromBinaryTbl: ```ts const document = TblDocument.parse(`Table\nColumn1 Column2\nValue1 Value2\nEnd`) const bytes = document.toBinaryTbl() const decodedDocument = SmlDocument.fromBinaryTbl(bytes) ``` --- _Source: https://npm.io/package/@stenway/tbl · Machine-readable twin of the npm.io package page. Health data is recomputed on every publish._