line break within cell for huxtable table

Question

I recently started using the huxtable R package for tables and I'm really impressed with it. One thing I can't seem to figure out, however, is how to get line breaks within a cell. Here's what I've tried

library(tidyverse)
library(huxtable)
cars <- mtcars %>% 
  mutate(car = rownames(.),
         car = str_replace(car, " ", "\n")) %>% 
  slice(1:5) %>% 
  select(car, cyl, hp)

cars

# A tibble: 5 x 3
  car                    cyl    hp
  <chr>                <dbl> <dbl>
1 "Mazda\nRX4"          6.00 110  
2 "Mazda\nRX4 Wag"      6.00 110  
3 "Datsun\n710"         4.00  93.0
4 "Hornet\n4 Drive"     6.00 110  
5 "Hornet\nSportabout"  8.00 175 

ht <- as_hux(cars, add_colnames = TRUE)
escape_contents(ht) <- TRUE
ht

But this ends up without the line break, as in the screenshot below

The escape_contents part doesn't seem to make a difference.

I'm not sure if what I want is possible, but I know it is in other packages (e.g., DT::datatable). I'd really like to use huxtable, if possible, however, because I like the design and flexibility of the package.

Any thoughts would be great.

EDIT: I should have specified I'm hoping to get this to work for PDF.

Answer 1

According to Escaping HTML or LaTeX, You should use escape_contents(ht) <- FALSE and use <br> tag instead of \n

library(tidyverse)
library(huxtable)
cars <- mtcars %>% mutate(car = rownames(.),
                          car = str_replace(car, " ", "<br>")) %>% 
                   slice(1:5) %>% select(car, cyl, hp)

 ht <- as_hux(cars, add_colnames = TRUE)
 escape_contents(ht) <- FALSE
 ht

note that the output is a Rmarkdown document and thanks for the package information. it looks good. following is the output of mine

Answer 2

Try this, which minimizes the amount of backslashes:

library(tidyverse)
library(huxtable)

cars <- mtcars %>% mutate(car = rownames(.))
cars$car <- str_replace(cars$car, " ", "\\\\newline ")
cars %>% 
      as_hux(add_colnames = TRUE) %>% 
      set_wrap(TRUE) %>% 
      set_escape_contents(everywhere, "car",  FALSE) %>% 
      quick_pdf()

The set_wrap() call is necessary for LaTeX tables to accept newlines, I believe.

If you want to escape different parts of the cells containing newlines, you can do that manually, e.g. with xtable::sanitize().