I need to generate formatted text packing slips for a Ruby on Rails project I'm working on. I'm considering using Ruport or just formatting it myself in a string and outputting it to text. The only challenge is justifying all of the output appropriately. It needs to look something like this, always aligned properly. Any recommendations?
Company Name
(T) 1-800-123-1234
(E) [email protected]
BILL TO: CUSTOMER NAME SHIP TO: CUSTOMER NAME
123 Some Street 321 Some Street
Address etc. Address etc.
Date: 2010-03-12 16:30
Payment Number: 1234-123456
LN NAME SKU DESCRIPTION QTY PRICE TOTAL
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
001 Product name GUDB 012 HGQ product description 2 52.99 105.98
- Color
As FM already suggested, you can use sprintf:
"%10s %-10s %10s" % ['abc', 'def', 'ghi'] # use negative numbers for left alignment
#=> " abc def ghi"
And if you need something more sophisticated, try using some standard templating engine, such as erb...