Implement write methods for XLSX and ODS

[leeper]

And submit it them to the readxl and readODS packages, respectively.

• write xlsx method
• write ods method

[jennybc]

Lurker here. Writing xlsx is a really big job. I'm up to my eyeballs in xlsx at this very moment. You might want to do a first pass with one of the packages that already does this. Or is it only offered by the ones that also have undesirable dependencies, e.g., Java? I can't remember. Do you want to write xlsx de novo or mutate an existing workbook?

[chainsawriot]

This one might be useful, because of its simplicity we can translate it into R.

https://github.com/mmulqueen/odswriter

[jsonbecker]

Any reason for a goal to remove openxlsx? In my experience, it's had the best speed and most options for working with Excel files.

[jennybc]

What degree of xlsx writing are you considering? "Data only" would be totally different (easier) than ... formatting, formulas, etc.

[leeper]

@jsonbecker I have a severe case of dependency aversion. It is sometimes too aggressive.

@jennybc Yes, I was thinking of basically being able to push a straightforward data rectangle into some kind of single-sheet template.

[jsonbecker]

@leeper a suggestion, if this is purely about reducing dependencies:

Maybe with the S3 stuff up and running, it would make more sense to break out read/write methods that are not available in base R into a rio_extras package that imports those packages. It just strikes me that an Excel reader/writer is non-trivial and seems out of scope of the intent of rio as a standalone package to me.

Edit:
D'oh. I misread. It seems like the decision is to use readxl and submit the writer upstream. Carry on.

[leeper]

xml2 now supports creating XML documents

[iembry-USGS]

Is write_ods available yet? I attempted to export to .ods with the CRAN version of rio, but it didn't work. Thank you.

[leeper]

@iembry-USGS Support is not yet on CRAN. I'm pushing an update momentarily that will make that available here on GitHub.

[leeper]

Sounds like xlsx is being taken care of. #145 (comment)

[leeper]

Jeroen has given us writexl, also on CRAN.

[sda030]

If you allow me to reopen this issue, I want to question why your last message, before closing this thread, mentioned Jenny's writexl-package.
If you are dependency-averse I would move from openxlsx to writexl as the latter has no dependencies (unless you count cpp11). openxlsx has 5 (though some are core packages)
writexl is twice as fast as openxlsx.
Github issues (currently 16) for writexl seem mostly centered around whether or not Clippy should be kept or removed from the help pages.. openxlsx has more open issues (due to larger scope).

On the other side, writexl has way fewer downloads compared with openxlsx and xlsx.