Figure filled with longtable

Question

I am currently creating a figure which is filled by longtable inside, why I do this is because I need the caption to be figure, while on the other hand, I need the table environment.

The thing is, the reason I use longtable is I will create a big table, but putting it inside a figure has made it unseparated. Is there a way to do this actually?

So what I already have are: 1.

\begin{longtable}{ccccc}
% Long content
\end{longtable}

This is ok, but I dont have the Figure caption (if it's possible to put this caption somewhere, maybe this will be an easier solution)

2.

\begin{figure}
  \begin{longtable}{ccccc}
  % Long content
  \end{longtable}
\end{figure}

With this, I will have the caption, but the table will always be in a page (they don't want to be separated).

Answer 1

Do not use a float for longtable, but rather the capt-of or caption package and then \captionof{figure}{...} to create the Figure caption. Because longtable does increment the table counter by one you need to reduce it again to ensure proper numbering for following tables.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{capt-of}

\begin{document}

% Document
\begin{center}
  \begin{longtable}{ccccc}
      a \\
  % Long content
  \end{longtable}%
  \captionof{figure}{Caption text}%
  \addtocounter{table}{-1}%
\end{center}

\end{document}

Answer 2

A simple way to do this is by using ltcaption package to redefine the float type of longtable, as suggested by this answer.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{ltcaption}
\renewcommand\LTcaptype{figure} % redefine the float type used by longtable

\begin{document}

\begin{longtable}{ccccc}
    \caption{My long table as a Figure} \\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
\end{longtable}

\end{document}

Note: There is no need to update the table counter with \addtocounter{table}{-1}.

---

Bonus

I am not sure if the following procedure causes the document to be unstable, but I was able to abuse this redefinition:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{ltcaption}

\begin{document}

\listoffigures
\listoftables

\renewcommand\LTcaptype{figure}
\begin{longtable}{ccccc}
    \caption{My first long table as a Figure} \\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
\end{longtable}

\renewcommand\LTcaptype{table}
\begin{longtable}{ccccc}
    \caption{My second long table as a Table} \\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
\end{longtable}

\renewcommand\LTcaptype{figure}
\begin{longtable}{ccccc}
    \caption{My third long table as a Figure} \\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
    Test & test 2 & test 3 & test 4 & test 5\\
\end{longtable}

\end{document}