Getting Column-Names to Wrap in R/Kable() HTML Table

Question

I'm trying to produce an HTML table output from an R data frame and am unable to get some long column names to wrap for a multi-line header row. Here is a minimal reproducible example of my current code and output:

library(datasets)
library(knitr)
library(kableExtra)

data(iris)

Output top 5 rows of iris table as html formatted table:

sink('my_file_path.html')
names_spaced <- c('Sepal Length', 'Sepal Width', 'Petal Length', 
                  'Petal Width Long Col Name', 'Species')

kable(head(iris), 
      format='html', 
      digits=1, 
      row.names=FALSE, 
      align='lccccc', 
      col.names = names_spaced)

sink()

When I open the saved file in the browser, my header row is just one line, but I need the words to wrap to one or two lines (hence 'Petal Width Long Col Name').

kable_styling function has a param bootstrap_options but that doesn't seem to have what I need. I also tried inserting \n within the column-names but to no avail.

I am not averse to using the xtable package instead of kable/knitr if that's part of the solution.

Answer 1

It is possible to create linebreaks with HTML syntax. In order for that to work, you will have to set the escape argument of kable to FALSE.

library(knitr)
data(iris)

sink('my_file_path.html')
names_spaced <- c(
  'Sepal Length', 'Sepal Width', 'Petal Length', 
  'Petal Width<br/> Long Col Name',                  ## add <br/>
  'Species')

kable(head(iris), 
      format='html', 
      digits=1, 
      row.names=FALSE, 
      align='lccccc', 
      col.names = names_spaced,
      escape = FALSE)                                ## disable html escape to 
                                                     ## make <br/> work

sink()