django-excel - Let you focus on data, instead of file formats

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Known constraints

Fonts, colors and charts are not supported.

Introduction

Here is a typical conversation between the developer and the user:

User: "I have uploaded an excel file"
      "but your application says un-supported file format"
Developer: "Did you upload an xlsx file or a csv file?"
User: "Well, I am not sure. I saved the data using "
      "Microsoft Excel. Surely, it must be in an excel format."
Developer: "OK. Here is the thing. I were not told to support"
           "all available excel formats in day 1. Live with it"
           "or delay the project x number of days."

django-excel is based on pyexcel and makes it easy to consume/produce information stored in excel files over HTTP protocol as well as on file system. This library can turn the excel data into a list of lists, a list of records(dictionaries), dictionaries of lists. And vice versa. Hence it lets you focus on data in Django based web development, instead of file formats.

The idea originated from the common usability problem: when an excel file driven web application is delivered for non-developer users (ie: team assistant, human resource administrator etc). The fact is that not everyone knows (or cares) about the differences between various excel formats: csv, xls, xlsx are all the same to them. Instead of training those users about file formats, this library helps web developers to handle most of the excel file formats by providing a common programming interface. To add a specific excel file format type to you application, all you need is to install an extra pyexcel plugin. Hence no code changes to your application and no issues with excel file formats any more. Looking at the community, this library and its associated ones try to become a small and easy to install alternative to Pandas.

The highlighted features are:

1. excel data import into and export from databases
2. turn uploaded excel file directly into Python data structure
3. pass Python data structures as an excel file download
4. provide data persistence as an excel file in server side
5. supports csv, tsv, csvz, tsvz by default and other formats are supported via the following plugins:

Dedicated file reader and writers

Package name	Supported file formats	Dependencies	Python versions
pyexcel-xlsxw	xlsx(write only)	XlsxWriter	Python 2 and 3
pyexcel-xlsxr	xlsx(read only)	lxml	same as above
pyexcel-odsr	read only for ods, fods	lxml	same as above
pyexcel-htmlr	html(read only)	lxml,html5lib	same as above

Dedicated file reader and writers

Other data renderers

Package name	Supported file formats	Dependencies	Python versions
pyexcel-text	write only:rst, mediawiki, html, latex, grid, pipe, orgtbl, plain simple read only: ndjson r/w: json	tabulate	2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 3.5, 3.6, pypy
pyexcel-handsontable	handsontable in html	handsontable	same as above
pyexcel-pygal	svg chart	pygal	2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 3.6, pypy
pyexcel-sortable	sortable table in html	csvtotable	same as above
pyexcel-gantt	gantt chart in html	frappe-gantt	except pypy, same as above

Other data renderers

In order to manage the list of plugins installed, you need to use pip to add or remove a plugin. When you use virtualenv, you can have different plugins per virtual environment. In the situation where you have multiple plugins that does the same thing in your environment, you need to tell pyexcel which plugin to use per function call. For example, pyexcel-ods and pyexcel-odsr, and you want to get_array to use pyexcel-odsr. You need to append get_array(..., library='pyexcel-odsr').

Footnotes

This library makes information processing involving various excel files as easy as processing array, dictionary when processing file upload/download, data import into and export from SQL databases, information analysis and persistence. It uses pyexcel and its plugins:

1. to provide one uniform programming interface to handle csv, tsv, xls, xlsx, xlsm and ods formats.
2. to provide one-stop utility to import the data in uploaded file into a database and to export tables in a database as excel files for file download.
3. to provide the same interface for information persistence at server side: saving a uploaded excel file to and loading a saved excel file from file system.

Tested Django Versions

Test on django 2.0.1 fails.

Installation

You can install django-excel via pip:

$ pip install django-excel

or clone it and install it:

$ git clone https://github.com/pyexcel-webwares/django-excel.git
$ cd django-excel
$ python setup.py install

Setup

You will need to update your settings.py:

FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS = ("django_excel.ExcelMemoryFileUploadHandler",
                        "django_excel.TemporaryExcelFileUploadHandler")

Usage

Here is the example viewing function codes:

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.http import HttpResponseBadRequest
from django import forms
from django.template import RequestContext
import django_excel as excel

class UploadFileForm(forms.Form):
    file = forms.FileField()

def upload(request):
    if request.method == "POST":
        form = UploadFileForm(request.POST, request.FILES)
        if form.is_valid():
            filehandle = request.FILES['file']
            return excel.make_response(filehandle.get_sheet(), "csv")
        else:
            return HttpResponseBadRequest()
    else:
        form = UploadFileForm()
    return render_to_response('upload_form.html',
                              {'form': form},
                              context_instance=RequestContext(request))

def download(request):
    sheet = excel.pe.Sheet([[1, 2],[3, 4]])
    return excel.make_response(sheet, "csv")

Development guide

Development steps for code changes

1. git clone
2. cd django-excel

Upgrade your setup tools and pip. They are needed for development and testing only:

1. pip install --upgrade setuptools pip

Then install relevant development requirements:

1. pip install -r rnd_requirements.txt # if such a file exists
2. pip install -r requirements.txt
3. pip install -r tests/requirements.txt

Once you have finished your changes, please provide test case(s), relevant documentation and update CHANGELOG.rst.

How to test your contribution

Although nose and doctest are both used in code testing, it is adviable that unit tests are put in tests. doctest is incorporated only to make sure the code examples in documentation remain valid across different development releases.

On Linux/Unix systems, please launch your tests like this:

$ make

On Windows systems, please issue this command:

> test.bat

How to update test environment and update documentation

Additional steps are required:

1. pip install moban
2. git clone # generic setup
3. git clone commons
4. make your changes in .moban.d directory, then issue command moban

What is pyexcel-commons

Many information that are shared across pyexcel projects, such as: this developer guide, license info, etc. are stored in pyexcel-commons project.

What is .moban.d

.moban.d stores the specific meta data for the library.

Acceptance criteria

1. Has Test cases written
2. Has all code lines tested
3. Passes all Travis CI builds
4. Has fair amount of documentation if your change is complex
5. Please update CHANGELOG.rst
6. Please add yourself to CONTRIBUTORS.rst
7. Agree on NEW BSD License for your contribution

License

New BSD License

Change log

0.0.10 - 11.01.2018

Added

1. pyexcel-io#46, expose bulk_save to django developers

0.0.9 - 12.07.2017

Added

1. bring isave_to_database and isave_book_to_database

0.0.8 - 07.07.2017

Added

1. pyexcel#39, explicitly seeking at 0

0.0.7 - 29.06.2017

Added

1. pyexcel#38, Support unicode code as download file name

0.0.6 - 12.22.2016

Updated

1. pyexcel#26, raise ioerror if content is empty.
2. Use pyexcel-webio v0.0.9 so as to push out new version of pyexcel and its plugins.

0.0.5 - 26.08.2016

Added:

1. Support for django 1.6.x
2. Tested against django 1.10