[melbourne-pug] Excel spreadsheet munging under Linux. Limits?

[Rasjid Wilcox]

Hi Javier,

I use xlwt (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlwt) to generate XLS 
spreadsheets.  It is a fork of pyExcelerator which is not longer maintained.

For fairly standard spreadsheets it works well.  You can do basic 
formatting, both in terms of fonts (bold etc), and also in terms of 
numeric formatting (currency and date formats etc).

Last I checked (and I don't think this has changed), it does not do 
charts or fancy stuff like that.

As long as it meets your needs it terms of spreadsheet complexity, it 
will work well.  Runs on any platform (will be fine on a Linux 
web-server), and is fast.

I looked into this extensively a few years ago - at the time it was 
definitely the way to go as long as it meets your requirements in terms 
of capabilities.


Your other options are:

Under Linux etc.
   Use a head-less copy of OpenOffice, and use its automation (pyUno) to 
generate a spreadsheet that way.  Be prepared for a lot of pain.
   Use Jython (or bridge to java in some way) and use one of the Java 
libraries to generate XLS files.  At least one of these has basic 
support for charts (although you may need a base template file to work 
from).

   I know there are some .Net libraries that can also generate xlsx 
files - these may work under Mono and IronPython.


Under Windows:
   All of the above, with the bonus that any .Net libraries are 
definitely going to work.
   Automate MS Office using Python's COM support.


The pro's of using automation (either OpenOffice or MS Office) is that 
you will get access to a much greater range of features.  It will, 
however, be slow, and can take noticeable amounts of time to generate a 
large spreadsheet.

Any of the libraries that generate the file directly will be *much* 
faster, and a better fit for server-side deployment.



Hmm... just seen your last email regarding macros.  Not sure if xlwt 
supports that.  You may have luck with the xlutils library mentioned - 
otherwise you may need to move to one of the more heavy duty options - 
either using a Java or .Net / Mono library, or going for full automation 
(I'd suggest MS Office over OpenOffice if going that route).


Cheers,

Rasjid.






On 4/02/2014 2:29 PM, Javier Candeira wrote:
> At work I need to manipulate a series of excel spreasheets, and I seem
> to remember that people have discussed the topic in a meeting. I have
> two questions to anyone who's already had to do the same:
>
> - What's the current best Python library for excel manipulation?
> - Are there any limitations for handling Excel sheets under Linux?
> What kind of thing would I need Windows (and presumably, a live copy
> of Office) for?
>
> As background for the question, I'm trying to avoid using Windows at
> all. My ideal workflow would involve users downloading generated
> spreadsheets from a webserver.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Javier
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