What to write or search on github to get the code for what is written below:

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

	*** Apologies for the repost. Since Gmane made the list a read-only
group, I finally broke down and reinstated Giganews comp.lang.python.
Unfortunately I'd missed that this came back with X-NoArchive active and
Google doesn't even let such messages show up for a day -- so the OP hasn't
seen any of my responses.

	As a courtesy, I will NOT be reposting the other four responses I've
made over the last few days. {If I do, it will be as a single consolidated
response} ***

On Mon, 10 Jan 2022 22:31:00 -0800 (PST), NArshad <narshad.380 at gmail.com>
declaimed the following:

>-“How are the relevant cells identified in the spreadsheet?”
>The column headings are:
>BOOK_NAME
>BOOK_AUTHOR
>BOOK_ISBN
>TOTAL_COPIES
>COPIES_LEFT
>BORROWER’S_NAME
>ISSUE_DATE
>RETURN_DATE
>

	So... Besides "BORROWER'S_NAME" you also have a pair of dates you have
to track in parallel, and which should also need to be updated whenever you
change the borrower field. Furthermore, if you plan to separate those with
commas, you'll need to escape any embedded commas or you'll find that names
like "John Doe, Jr" will mess up the correspondence as you'd treat that as
two names on reading the borrower field. Also you need to be aware of the
limits for Excel text cells -- while you could stuff 32kB of text into a
cell, Excel itself will only display the first 1024 characters. That might
be sufficient if the average name is around 31 characters (32 with your
comma separator) as it would allow 32 names to be entered and still display
in Excel itself. Oh, and to track multiple dates in a cell, you'll have to
convert from date to text when writing the cell, and from text back to date
when reading the cell -- since you can't comma separate multiple dates.

	Total_Copies - Copies_Left should be equal to the number of names (and
dates). In short, this is a very messy structure to be maintaining. If not
using an RDBM, at the very least borrower/issue date/return date should be
moved to a separate sheet which also has "Book ID" (the row number in the
first sheet with the book). That way you'd have one record per borrower,
and can easily add new records at the bottom of the sheet (might need to
use a "Book ID" of "0" to indicate a deleted record (when a borrower
returns the book) so you can reuse the slot, since you'd need some way to
identify the end of the data -- most likely by a blank record..

>-“If that's what you have in your spreadsheet, then read the cells on the first row for the column labels and put them in a dict to map from column label to column number.”
>
>This written above I do not understand how to code. 

	Have you gone through the Python Tutorial? Dictionaries are one of
Python's basic data structures. https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/

	You are unlikely to find anything near to your application on-line --
pretty much anyone doing something like a library check-out system will be
using a relational database rather than spread sheets. At worst, they may
have a spread sheet import operation to do initial population of the
database, though even that might be using SQL operations (Windows supports
Excel files as an ODBC data source). See:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/data/odbc/data-source-managing-connections-odbc?view=msvc-170
They are unlikely to be dong any exports to Excel -- that's the realm of
report logic. According to
https://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/dfdmstudio/2.5/dmpdmsug/Content/dfDMStd_T_Excel_ODBC.html
"""
Note: You cannot use a DSN to write output to Excel format. You can,
however, use a Text File Output node in a data job to write output in CSV
format. You can then import the CSV file into Excel.
"""
	A Java-biased (old Java -- the interface to ODBC has been removed from
current Java) example that doesn't seem to need "named ranges" is
https://querysurge.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205766136-Writing-SQL-Queries-against-Excel-files-using-ODBC-connection-Deprecated-Excel-SQL-

	Or...
https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/databases/sql-server/database-administration-sql-server/getting-data-between-excel-and-sql-server-using-odbc/
(which also indicates that it is possible to update the file via ODBC...
But note the constraints regarding having 64-bit vs 32-bit drivers).
Obviously you'll need to translate the PowerShell syntax into Python's ODBC
DB-API interface (which is a bit archaic as I recall -- does not match
current DP-API specifications).



-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
	wlfraed at ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/


-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
	wlfraed at ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/