Raw Tables¶

Sometimes a Behave table has no header, or you want to treat the first row as data too. RawTable gives you full access to all rows as a plain matrix of strings.

When to use¶

Vertical tables where the first column is a label.
Tables without a header row.
Any time you need the raw cell matrix before typed conversion.

Basic example¶

Scenario: Raw matrix
  Given a raw table
    | col1 | col2 |
    | a    | b    |
    | c    | d    |

from behave_data import RawTable, raw_table

@given("a raw table")
def step_raw(context):
    context.raw = raw_table(context.table)

context.raw.rows returns every row, including the header:

[["col1", "col2"], ["a", "b"], ["c", "d"]]

Access rows¶

context.raw.rows      # all rows including header
context.raw.raw_rows  # alias
len(context.raw)      # number of rows (including header)

Index a row:

context.raw[0]  # ["col1", "col2"]
context.raw[1]  # ["a", "b"]

Convert with custom headers¶

Use to_dicts() when you want to name the columns yourself:

context.raw.to_dicts(["x", "y"])
# [{"x": "a", "y": "b"}, {"x": "c", "y": "d"}]

Raw table without header¶

Scenario: No header
  Given a raw table
    | 2024-01-15 | 100 |
    | 2024-06-30 | 200 |

@given("a raw table")
def step_raw(context):
    raw = raw_table(context.table)
    assert raw.rows == [
        ["2024-01-15", "100"],
        ["2024-06-30", "200"],
    ]

Comparison¶

RawTable supports equality comparison:

from behave_data import RawTable

table1 = RawTable(context.table1)
table2 = RawTable(context.table2)
assert table1 == table2

RawTable is unhashable by design.