The fmt_email() function

Let’s take ten rows from the peeps dataset and create a table of contact information with mailing addresses and email addresses. With the column that contains email addresses (email_addr), we can use fmt_email() to generate ‘mailto:’ links. Clicking any of these formatted email addresses should result in new message creation (depending on the OS integration with an email client).

peeps |>
  dplyr::filter(country == "AUS") |>
  dplyr::select(
    starts_with("name"),
    address, city, state_prov, postcode, country, email_addr
  ) |>
  dplyr::mutate(city = toupper(city)) |>
  gt(rowname_col = "name_family") |>
  tab_header(title = "Our Contacts in Australia") |>
  tab_stubhead(label = "Name") |>
  fmt_email(columns = email_addr) |>
  fmt_country(columns = country) |>
  cols_merge(
    columns = c(address, city, state_prov, postcode, country),
    pattern = "{1}<br>{2} {3} {4}<br>{5}"
  ) |>
  cols_merge(
    columns = c(name_family, name_given),
    pattern = "{1},<br>{2}"
  ) |>
  cols_label(
    address = "Mailing Address",
    email_addr = "Email"
  ) |>
  tab_style(
    style = cell_text(size = "x-small"),
    locations = cells_body(columns = address)
  ) |>
  opt_align_table_header(align = "left")

Our Contacts in Australia
Name	Mailing Address	Email
Christison, Milla	34 McGregor Street KINALUNG NSW 2880 Australia	milla_c@example.com
Stead, Alannah	44 Mt Berryman Road ROPELEY QLD 4343 Australia	alannahstead@example.com
Fitzhardinge, Lucas	88 Dossiter Street WATERLOO TAS 7109 Australia	lucas_fitz@example.com
Goldhar, Lucinda	24 Settlement Road DARGO VIC 3862 Australia	lucinda_g@example.com
Dearth, Alexis	60 Sunnyside Road TAYLORVILLE SA 5330 Australia	alexisdearth@example.com
Hansen, Christopher	99 Weemala Avenue GOOLOOGONG NSW 2805 Australia	chrishansen85@example.com
Kaczmarek, Scott	94 Peninsula Drive ILLAWONG NSW 2234 Australia	scott_kaczmarek@example.com
Pugliesi, Brandon	83 McDowall Street BALMORAL RIDGE QLD 4552 Australia	brandon_pugliesi@example.com
Bremer, Rachel	80 Argyle Street STRATFORD NSW 2422 Australia	rachel_bremer@example.com
Kerferd, Kaitlyn	15 Souttar Terrace KINGSLEY WA 6026 Australia	kaitlyn_kerferd@example.com

We can further condense the table by reducing the email link to an icon. The approach we take here is the use of a fontawesome icon within the display_name argument. The icon used is "envelope" and each icon produced serves as a clickable ‘mailto:’ link. By adjusting one of the cols_merge() calls, we can place the icon/link next to the name of the person.

peeps |>
  dplyr::filter(country == "AUS") |>
  dplyr::select(
    starts_with("name"),
    address, city, state_prov, postcode, country, email_addr
  ) |>
  dplyr::mutate(city = toupper(city)) |>
  gt(rowname_col = "name_family") |>
  tab_header(title = "Our Contacts in Australia") |>
  fmt_email(
    columns = email_addr,
    display_name = fontawesome::fa(
      name = "envelope",
      height = "0.75em",
      fill = "gray"
    )
  ) |>
  fmt_country(columns = country) |>
  cols_merge(
    columns = c(address, city, state_prov, postcode, country),
    pattern = "{1}<br>{2} {3} {4}<br>{5}"
  ) |>
  cols_merge(
    columns = c(name_family, name_given, email_addr),
    pattern = "{1}, {2} {3}"
  ) |>
  cols_width(everything() ~ px(200)) |>
  tab_style(
    style = cell_text(size = px(11)),
    locations = cells_body(columns = address)
  ) |>
  tab_options(column_labels.hidden = TRUE) |>
  opt_align_table_header(align = "left")

Our Contacts in Australia
Christison, Milla	34 McGregor Street KINALUNG NSW 2880 Australia
Stead, Alannah	44 Mt Berryman Road ROPELEY QLD 4343 Australia
Fitzhardinge, Lucas	88 Dossiter Street WATERLOO TAS 7109 Australia
Goldhar, Lucinda	24 Settlement Road DARGO VIC 3862 Australia
Dearth, Alexis	60 Sunnyside Road TAYLORVILLE SA 5330 Australia
Hansen, Christopher	99 Weemala Avenue GOOLOOGONG NSW 2805 Australia
Kaczmarek, Scott	94 Peninsula Drive ILLAWONG NSW 2234 Australia
Pugliesi, Brandon	83 McDowall Street BALMORAL RIDGE QLD 4552 Australia
Bremer, Rachel	80 Argyle Street STRATFORD NSW 2422 Australia
Kerferd, Kaitlyn	15 Souttar Terrace KINGSLEY WA 6026 Australia

Another option is to display the names of the email recipients instead of the email addresses, making the display names serve as ‘mailto:’ links. We can do this by using from_column() in the display_name argument. The display names in this case are the combined given and family names, handled earlier through a dplyr::mutate() call. With some space conserved, we take the opportunity here to add in phone information for each person.

peeps |>
  dplyr::filter(country == "AUS") |>
  dplyr::mutate(name = paste(name_given, name_family)) |>
  dplyr::mutate(city = toupper(city)) |>
  dplyr::mutate(phone_number = gsub("^\\(0|\\)", "", phone_number)) |>
  dplyr::select(
    name, address, city, state_prov, postcode, country,
    email_addr, phone_number, country_code
  ) |>
  gt(rowname_col = "email_addr") |>
  tab_header(title = "Our Contacts in Australia") |>
  tab_stubhead(label = "Name") |>
  fmt_email(
    columns = email_addr,
    display_name = from_column("name"),
    color = "gray25"
  ) |>
  cols_hide(columns = name) |>
  fmt_country(columns = country) |>
  cols_merge(
    columns = c(address, city, state_prov, postcode, country),
    pattern = "{1}<br>{2} {3} {4}<br>{5}"
  ) |>
  cols_merge(
    columns = c(phone_number, country_code),
    pattern = "+{2} {1}"
  ) |>
  cols_label(
    address = "Mailing Address",
    email_addr = "Email",
    phone_number = "Phone"
  ) |>
  cols_move_to_start(columns = phone_number) |>
  cols_width(everything() ~ px(170)) |>
  tab_style(
    style = cell_text(size = px(11)),
    locations = cells_body(columns = address)
  ) |>
  cols_align(align = "left") |>
  opt_align_table_header(align = "left")

Our Contacts in Australia
Name	Phone	Mailing Address
Milla Christison	+61 2 4002 5734	34 McGregor Street KINALUNG NSW 2880 Australia
Alannah Stead	+61 7 4598 9718	44 Mt Berryman Road ROPELEY QLD 4343 Australia
Lucas Fitzhardinge	+61 3 6214 2586	88 Dossiter Street WATERLOO TAS 7109 Australia
Lucinda Goldhar	+61 8 8764 0723	24 Settlement Road DARGO VIC 3862 Australia
Alexis Dearth	+61 8 8781 7784	60 Sunnyside Road TAYLORVILLE SA 5330 Australia
Christopher Hansen	+61 2 4001 7042	99 Weemala Avenue GOOLOOGONG NSW 2805 Australia
Scott Kaczmarek	+61 2 4251 1932	94 Peninsula Drive ILLAWONG NSW 2234 Australia
Brandon Pugliesi	+61 7 5376 0506	83 McDowall Street BALMORAL RIDGE QLD 4552 Australia
Rachel Bremer	+61 2 4904 0795	80 Argyle Street STRATFORD NSW 2422 Australia
Kaitlyn Kerferd	+61 8 9463 8262	15 Souttar Terrace KINGSLEY WA 6026 Australia