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See GUIDE.md for syntax conventions.

Installation troubleshooting

After you have cloned the source run bundle command in gem directory to install needed tools. If there are any errors try to

  1. Make sure that necessary tools are installed. In debian based distros you may try this apt-get install make gcc. In other distros, use their native way to install tool.
  2. Comment out guard and guard-rspec lines from gemfile if you use ruby version less than 2.2.1.

Ideas/wishlist

  • refactor Style and AutomaticStyle objects from CellFormat.
  • introduce "speedup" option, which can for example skip all "safetest" (or it can be named $prudent = true/false)
  • make it configurable whether Time or DateTime will be used.
  • In future inntroduce syntax like sheet.range('C3:E4') for mass operations.
  • Trying to make row Enumerable - perhaps skipping empty or undefined cells.
  • Maybe insted two syntaxes for accessing cell, we make both of them do the same and return Proxy object which would act either as value or cell.
  • Document that there is a little distinction betwean RSpreadsheet and RSpreadsheet::Workbook. The former delegates everythink to the other.
  • allow book.worskheets.first syntax
  • allow `sheet.cells.sum { |cell| cell.value }
  • allow `sheet.rows(1).cells.each {} iterate through nonempty cells ??? or all of them until last used
  • sheet.rows(1).cells returns list of cells objects and sheet.rows(1).cellvalues return array of values with nils when empty
  • implement to_csv
  • longterm plan - go through other used libraries and try to find out whose syntax could be adopted, so this library is drop in replacement (possibly with some config options) for them
  • iterative generation like this
  • Currently the way you insert cells and rows is that you insert empty one and than copy values. It would be interesting to add "duplicate" method as well as other "copy pasting" stuff, which would be more forward compatible.
  • Optionally allow negative coordinates count from end
RSpreadsheet.generate('pricelist.ods') do 
    row 'icecream name', 'price'
    { 'Vanilla' => 2, 'Banana' => 3, 'Strawbery' => 2.7 }.each do |icecream, price|
      row icecream, price
      row '2x 'icecream, price * 1.8
    end
    skip_row
    row 'Menu made by rspreadsheet', :format => {:font => {:size => 5}}
    move_to A5
    cell 'Have a nice day!'
end

  • possible ideas from Google Spreadsheet API (issue #9). For now just raw list of what could be used

    • appendRaw(rowContents)
    • concept of active sheets with methods like - deleteActiveSheet, getActiveSheet, duplicateActiveSheet(), getActiveCell()
    • @sheet.delete_column(2), @sheet.delete_columns(from, howmany), @sheet.delete_row(2), ...
    • GS API uses @workbook.deletesheet(@sheet) but it is nor very ruby way. What about @worksheet.delete or @workbook.delete_sheet(2) as syntactic shugar to @workbook.worksheets(2).delete
    • getAs(contentType) - Return the data inside this object as a blob converted to the specified content type. Maybe something like @workbook.worksheets(2).to_pdf or @workbook.worksheets(2).to_blob('application/pdf'). Is there anything like Blob in ruby?
    • getDataRange() - Returns a Range corresponding to the dimensions in which data is present
    • setActiveRange(range), setActiveSelection(range) - ? what is the difference
    • @sheet. getFrozenColumns(), @sheet.getFrozenColumns()
    • getLastColumn(), getLastRow()
    • getRange(a1Notation), getRangeByName(name), range.get_values
    • getRowHeight(rowPosition)
    • hideColumn(column), unhideColumn(column), insertColumnAfter(afterPosition), insertColumnsAfter(afterPosition, howMany), insertImage(blob, column, row)
    • moveActiveSheet(pos)
    • sort(columnPosition,ascending=true) - Sorts a sheet by column.
    • Range#breakApart() - Break any multi-column cells in the range into individual cells again.
    • Range#canEdit()
    • Range#copyTo(destination)
    • Range#merge() - Merges the cells in the range together into a single block.

  • @book.sheet_names - Array of names of sheets.

  • array returned by rows of cells can have predefined dummy object as defaults for out of range indexes

Guiding ideas

  • xml document is always synchronized with the data. So the save is trivial.
  • no duplication of data. Objects like RowArray should containg minimum information. This one exists solely to speed up cell search. Taken to extream it is questionable, whether we need such objects at all, it might be possible to always work with xml directly.
  • all cells and rows only serve as a proxy. They hold index and worksheet pointer and everytime read or write is done, the xml is newly searched. until there is a xmlnode caching we have no problem
  • all cells returned for particular coordinates are always the same object. This way we have no problem to synchronize changes.

Known Issues

  • currently there is a confusing syntax @worksheet.rows(1).cells[5] which returns a cell object in SIXT column, which is not intended. It is side effecto of Row#cells returning an array

Release notes

Release notes are maintaned on github.

Developing this gem

Automated testing

  • bundle exec guard will get tested any changes as soon as they are summitted
  • bundle exec rake spec runs all test manually

Automated utilities

  • travis-ci provides automated testing - it tests every commit even in branches
  • github hosts the repository where you can get the code
  • coverals checks how well source is covered by tests

Local testing and releasing (to github and rubygems).

  1. Make changes
  2. Test if all tests pass (run bundle exec guard to test automatically). If not go to 1.
  3. Build and install locally using script ./reinstall_local_gem.sh (see details)
  4. Now can locally and manually use/test the gem. This should not be replacement for automated testing. If you make any changes, go to 1.
  5. If you want to test in travis before the release, you can git push the changes and let travis test them. If you want to be extra prudent you can do this in feature branch by git checkout -b <feature-branch-name>; git push -u origin <feature-branch-name>
  6. When happy, increment the version number and git add .; git commit -am'commit message'; git push
  7. rake release - creates a version tag in git and pushes the code to github + Rubygems. After this is succesfull the new version appears as release in Github and RubyGems.
  8. If you have used the feature branch, than delete it.

gem alternative to step 3 and 7

gem build rspreadsheet.gemspec              -\   These two lines together are in reinstall_local_gem.sh
sudo gem install rspreadsheet-x.y.z.gem     -/   which should be invoked from parent directory
gem push rspreadsheet-x.y.z.gem             releases the gem, do not forgot to update version in rspreadsheet.gemspec before doing this

Naming conventions

  • create_xxx - creates object and inserts it where necessary
  • prepare_xxx - create object, but does not insert it anywhere