R gt table gt data.row.padding for certain columns only

Question

I came across this question and basically I want to do the same thing, but set the cell padding only for certain columns.

R - gt package - Ability to control cell padding within table header and column labels?

This is my dataframe:

gt(data = mtcars) %>% 
  tab_header(
    title = "mtcars dataset") %>% 
  tab_options(data_row.padding = px(10), 
              column_labels.padding = px(3), 
              heading.padding = px(5), 
              data_row.padding.horizontal = px(5))  

And I want to apply the "data_row.padding.horizontal" only to the last 4 columns for example. In my real case I have a vector full of column numbers, where I want to reduce the data_row.padding to 0. My desired output would be a data_row.padding for the whole table of 10, but in the last 4 columns I want padding 0. The helper function "locations" is not working for me and I dont really know how to work with a loop in this case.

Answer 1

One method you could use is setting the column width conditionally. I've included 2 examples of how to do this.

• In the first, I've just assigned this width to the column vs.
• In the second, I've modified mtcars so that all columns are not numeric, then assigned the width to numeric columns. Lastly, I centered no numeric columns so the padding variation would be more obvious

Here are two examples of setting the column width conditionally.

Just the vs column:

gt(data = mtcars) %>% 
  tab_header(
    title = "mtcars dataset") %>% 
  cols_width(vs ~ pct(10))

All columns that are numeric:

mtcars %>% 
  mutate(cyl = factor(cyl),
         across(vs:carb, factor)) %>%          # change some fields to factor
  gt() %>% 
  tab_header(
    title = "mtcars dataset") %>% 
  cols_width(where(is.numeric) ~ pct(15)) %>%  # widths of numeric columns
  cols_align(align = c("center"),              # center non-numeric
             columns = where(is.factor))