README for Roo

Roo implements read access for all spreadsheet types and read/write access for Google spreadsheets. It can handle

• Openoffice
• Excel
• Google spreadsheets
• Excelx
• Libreoffice
• CSV

Using Roo to access Google spreadsheets requires you install the 'google-spreadsheet-ruby' gem separately.

Unless the underlying 'spreadsheet' gem supports formulas there is no support for formulas in Roo for .xls files (you get the result of a formula in such a file but not the formula itself)

License

While Roo is licensed under the MIT / Expat license, please note that the 'spreadsheet' gem is released under the GPLv3 license.

Usage:

require 'roo'

s = Roo::Openoffice.new("myspreadsheet.ods")      # creates an Openoffice Spreadsheet instance
s = Roo::Excel.new("myspreadsheet.xls")           # creates an Excel Spreadsheet instance
s = Roo::Google.new("myspreadsheetkey_at_google") # creates an Google Spreadsheet instance
s = Roo::Excelx.new("myspreadsheet.xlsx")         # creates an Excel Spreadsheet instance for Excel .xlsx files

s.default_sheet = s.sheets.first             # first sheet in the spreadsheet file will be used

# s.sheet is an array which holds the names of the sheets within
# a spreadsheet.
# you can also write
# s.default_sheet = s.sheets[3] or
# s.default_sheet = 'Sheet 3'

s.cell(1,1)                                 # returns the content of the first row/first cell in the sheet
s.cell('A',1)                               # same cell
s.cell(1,'A')                               # same cell
s.cell(1,'A',s.sheets[0])                   # same cell

# almost all methods have an optional argument 'sheet'.
# If this parameter is omitted, the default_sheet will be used.

s.info                                      # prints infos about the spreadsheet file

s.first_row                                 # the number of the first row
s.last_row                                  # the number of the last row
s.first_column                              # the number of the first column
s.last_column                               # the number of the last column

# limited font information is available

s.font(1,1).bold?
s.font(1,1).italic?
s.font(1,1).underline?

see http://roo.rubyforge.org for a more complete tutorial

Fork Changelog / New Features

# Spreadsheet.open can accept both files and paths

xls = Roo::Spreadsheet.open('./new_prices.xls')

# no more setting xls.default_sheet, just use this

xls.sheet('Info').row_count
xls.sheet(0).row_count

# excel likes to create random "Data01" sheets for macros
# use this to find the sheet with the most data to parse

xls.longest_sheet

# this excel file has multiple worksheets, let's iterate through each of them and process

xls.each_with_pagename do |name,sheet|
puts sheet.row_count
end

# pull out a hash of exclusive column data (get rid of useless columns and save memory)

xls.each(:id => 'UPC',:qty => 'ATS') {|hash| arr << hash}
#=> hash will appear like {:upc=>727880013358, :qty => 12}

# NOTE: .parse does the same as .each, except it returns an array (similar to each vs. map)

# not sure exactly what a column will be named? try a wildcard search with the character *
# regex characters are allowed ('^price\s')
# case insensitive

xls.parse(:id => 'UPC*SKU',:qty => 'ATS*\sATP\s*QTY$')

# if you need to locate the header row and assign the header names themselves,
# use the :header_search option

xls.parse(:header_search => ['UPC*SKU','ATS*\sATP\s*QTY$'])
#=> each element will appear in this fashion:
#=> {"UPC" => 123456789012, "STYLE" => "987B0", "COLOR" => "blue", "QTY" => 78}

# want to strip out annoying unicode characters and surrounding white space?

xls.parse(:clean => true)

# another bonus feature is a patch to prevent the Spreadsheet gem from parsing
# thousands and thousands of blank lines. i got fed up after watching my computer
# nearly catch fire for 4 hours for a spreadsheet with only 200 ACTUAL lines
# - located in lib/roo/worksheet.rb