[reportlab-users] Error in table column sizing with Platypus

[Robin Becker]

Hi Andy, thanks for the report. It is a bug so perhaps this is a rare case
as tests did not catch it.

I have added a fix and another test. They will be in the release.

On Sat, 20 Dec 2025 at 16:52, Andy Hagar <atboom33w at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I recently ran into an issue with table column sizing. Initially, the
> error message was for:
> AttributeError: 'float' object has no attribute 'endswith'
>
> An example setup is below to show the error happening.
>
> To get to this code path, I happened to have the following in my table
> using Platypus
> -At least 1 entry in a row uses Paragraph for formatting
> -Specifying colWidth with one entry using percentage "%"
> -Data in columns causing total column width to exceed availableWidth
>
> The error occurs at line 940 in tables.py:
> if w.endswith('%'):
>
> Watching at execution, w is indeed a float.
> Just changing to using the already existing _endswidth(w,'%') function
> does allow the pdf to build, but it is ignoring the "X%" specified.
>
> Changing line 940 and the following has it look at W where the actual "X%"
> value exists, but also changes the calculation on line 941 to handle the
> percentage calc (assuming it is meant to be a % out of 100).
>
> Current:
> if w.endswith('%'):
> W[colNo] = w = availWidth*float(w[:-1])/percentTotal
>
> Updated:
> if _endswith(W[colNo], '%'):
> W[colNo] = w = availWidth * float(W[colNo][:-1]) / 100
>
>
> This change works fine to a point. When you specify a large-ish % and have
> columns that are "wide", other errors start showing up. For the below
> script, 88 or higher % causes errors elsewhere.
>
> This error is already called out in
> https://groups.google.com/g/reportlab-users/c/k7GS01u3jrU
> Error:
> TypeError: '>' not supported between instances of 'NoneType' and 'int'
>
> Caused by Line 440:
> tallest = '(tallest row %d)' % int(max(rh))
>
> Changing to:
> tallest = '(tallest row %d)' % int(max([i for i in rh if i], default=0))
>
> Next error:
> ValueError: <Table at 0x20017F3A270 2 rows x 3 cols(tallest row 18)> with
> cell(0,0) containing
> 'Header 1': flowable given negative availWidth=-0.779770753733942 ==
> width=11.220229246266058 - leftPadding=6 - rightPadding=6
>
>
> At this point, as I was changing the % for testing and errors started
> getting out of my depth, I just said "don't use silly %" and went about my
> business :)
>
> ---
>
> Example script to hit this code path:
>
> from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Table, Paragraph
> from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
> from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
>
> styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
>
> data = [
>     ['Header 1', 'Header 2', 'Header 3'],
>     [Paragraph('Row 1, Col 1 wide data wide data wide data wide data',
> styles['Normal']), 'Row 1, Col 2 wide data wide data wide data', 'Row 1,
> Col 3 wide data wide data wide data']
> ]
>
> doc = SimpleDocTemplate("table_endswidth.pdf", pagesize=letter)
> story = []
>
> colwidths = [None, "20%", None]
> table = Table(data, colWidths=colwidths)
>
> story.append(table)
> doc.build(story)
>


-- 
Robin Becker
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