How do I send a styled pandas DataFrame by e-mail without losing the format?

Question

I am pretty new to Python and to the Jupyter Notebook. So any help will be appreciated. I was able to color specific cells of my DataFrame following this question.

Now suppose that I have that table with the "style" on it (as the one in the accepted answer) and I wish to send it by e-mail to someone (in this case, myself) without losing any of the format (it should contain the colored cells, the border, and everything else).

I have tried using the .render() function and then attaching the HTML code to the body of the e-mail but I keep getting a borderless table with no structure. I have followed this post to code the e-mail part. The only difference is that I am not using the "plain text" part.

Also, how can I add more features to the table itself? Like adding table title, modify the spacing between the columns, increasing or decreasing the font size?

Thank you!

In some cases you can't really have all of the style. It depends on where you open the email. For example different versions of MS Outlook support different sets of html tags. — Alex Fish, Jul 31 '19 at 03:04
@AlexFish is correct. You are limited a bit. In this case you won't be able to use css styles. All styling will have to be inline using MS Outlook. See my answer below for the solution. — braintho, Jul 31 '19 at 03:18
@AlexFish do you know any other methods I can try to send a styled table by email? — user11861242, Jul 31 '19 at 13:05

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 31 '19 at 03:16

Here is a function that I use for this very case. The for loop is to create banded rows.

def html_style_basic(df,index=True):
    import pandas as pd
    x = df.to_html(index = index)
    x = x.replace('<table border="1" class="dataframe">','<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; width: 25%;">')
    x = x.replace('<th>','<th style="text-align: left; padding: 2px; border-left: 1px solid #cdd0d4;" align="left">')
    x = x.replace('<td>','<td style="text-align: left; padding: 2px; border-left: 1px solid #cdd0d4; border-right: 1px solid #cdd0d4;" align="left">')
    x = x.replace('<tr style="text-align: right;">','<tr>')

    x = x.split()
    count = 2 
    index = 0
    for i in x:
        if '<tr>' in i:
            count+=1
            if count%2==0:
                x[index] = x[index].replace('<tr>','<tr style="background-color: #f2f2f2;" bgcolor="#f2f2f2">')
        index += 1
    return ' '.join(x)

I had to change the "to_html()" part to "render()" since I'm sending the styled dataframe. It did improve the overall look of the table, but it has also changed the colored cells I had. The color is now showing on random cells not on the ones I initially specified. — user11861242, Jul 31 '19 at 13:53

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 01 '19 at 00:08

I was able to find an answer to my question following this post: how to draw a beautiful colorful table with pandas or other package in Python?

Essentially, if you use the .set_table_styles to add the borders after adding the colors to the cells, the html code sent by e-mail will be displayed properly. I hope it helps anyone with the same issue.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 31 '19 at 03:23

0

Based on the fact that you already got a styled DataFrame through Format the color of a cell in a pandas dataframe according to multiple conditions, then you can save it to a html file.

with open('DataFrame.html', 'a') as f:
    f.write(df.render() )

For the further need of customization, visit https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/style.html.

answered Jul 31 '19 at 03:23

ComplicatedPhenomenon

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I've tried doing this but the borderless table remains. – user11861242 Jul 31 '19 at 13:59
@user11861242 That because the original table is `df` borderless. – ComplicatedPhenomenon Jul 31 '19 at 14:05
And how would I add the borders to it while also keeping the colored cells? Any ideas, please? I tried the above answer, it does add more structure to the table but it messes with my styled cells. – user11861242 Jul 31 '19 at 14:36
@user11861242, sorry, I know little about adding borders to such objects. – ComplicatedPhenomenon Jul 31 '19 at 15:09
@user11861242 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49888173/python-jupyter-notebook-print-dataframe-borders/51858584 for adding borders to raw `DataFrame ` – ComplicatedPhenomenon Jul 31 '19 at 15:10

How do I send a styled pandas DataFrame by e-mail without losing the format?

3 Answers3