harvesthq/simple_xlsx_writer

Simpe writer for Office 2007 Excel files

Description

This is a simple, no-fuss generator for OpenXML (aka XLSX) files. No formatting or styles included -- just raw content with a few basic datatypes supported. Produced output is tested to be compatible with:

• Open Office 3.2 series (Linux, Mac, Windows)
• Neo Office 3.2 series (Mac)
• Microsoft Office 2007 (Windows)
• Microsoft Office 2010 (Windows)
• Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (versions 12.2.5 or above)
• Microsoft Excel Viewer (Windows)

iWork's Numbers does not appear to support the inline string storage model used by this gem. Apple may release a fix for this eventually, but for now, I have avoided the more common shared string table method as it cannot be implemented in linear time.

Sample

require 'simple_xlsx'

serializer = SimpleXlsx::Serializer.new("test.xlsx") do |doc|
  doc.add_sheet("People") do |sheet|
    sheet.add_row(%w{DoB Name Occupation})
    sheet.add_row([Date.parse("July 31, 1912"), 
                  "Milton Friedman", 
                  "Economist / Statistician"])
  end
end

License

See attached LICENSE for details.

Credits

• Built by Harvest. Want to work on projects like this? We’re hiring!
• Concept and development by Dee Zsombor.

simple_xlsx_writer's Issues

Forward slash in sheet name causes Excel to implode

I have an app that is using the simple_xslx_writer gem to generate some spreadsheets. The sheet names can come from user input elsewhere in the system (since these are generated programmatically). One workbook sheet has a forward slash it's name. I unzipped the xlsx file, removed the forward slash and rezipped the file and was then able to open it.

I actually have a fork of your app that I've applied Jussi Pasenan's patch to and made all the tests pass. I'll look in to resolving the issue in my fork and will create a pull request if you're interested.

Follow up from closed Issue #1

Follow up from closed Issue #1

Thank you all for creating such an easy to use library. I wanted to follow up on this thread to report current findings on this issue.

Issue is present with Excel 2011 Mac as well as Excel 2013 (Win7). Both versions of Excel complain about corrupted files. After clicking on that error prompt, Excel goes through a recovery process and the file and content are available.

Issue probably stems from known issues with the Zip library. Here's a description of the issue on RubyZip's repo.

I'll see if it's an older gem issue and if there are available solutions. I'll report back here with what I find.

Name conflict in Rails3

When adding the gem in my Gemfile like this

gem 'simple_xlsx_writer', :require => 'simple_xlsx'

I get this:

/Users/libo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-head/gems/builder-2.1.2/lib/builder/xchar.rb:14:in `check_for_name_collision': Name Collision: Method 'to_xs' is already defined in String (RuntimeError)
from /Users/libo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-head/gems/builder-2.1.2/lib/builder/xchar.rb:21
from /Users/libo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-head/gems/activesupport-3.0.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require'
from /Users/libo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-head/gems/activesupport-3.0.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require'

Excel cannot open this file.

I tried your writer, but got the error:

Excel cannot open this file.
The file might have been damaged or modified from its original format.

When I open it up in "Numbers", I see only the columns with numbers or dates in them, no strings.

Option to clean up temp files?

Thanks for this library! Is there an option I have to set to get simple xlsx to clean up after itself? It leaves half a dozen temp files laying around every time I use it to generate a new excel file.