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A straightforward way to import data from an excel sheet into your ruby app.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'excelsior'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install excelsior

How to use it

Create a class which declares how columns from an excel sheet map to your ruby object model by extending from the Excelsior::Importer class:

class UserImporter < Excelsior::Importer
  # declare the source file
  source "static/ftp/users.xlsx"

  # declare the mapping
  map "First Name", to: :firstname
  map "Last Name", to: :lastname
  map "E-Mail", to: :email
end

Create an instance of your import and run it. By default it infers the model to be imported from the classname, e.g.:

import = UserImport.new
import.run # calls User.create!(row) for each row

Model validation

A summary of the ActiveRecord model validations is available after running the importer. The Error objects indicates the failed excel row and the corresponding errors.

import = UserImport.new
import.run

import.errors[:model]
# => [#<struct Excelsior::Error row=3, errors=["First name can't be blank"]>]

Report

A summary of the successfully inserted and failed records is available after running the importer.

import = UserImport.new
import.run

import.report
# => #<struct Excelsior::Report inserted=2, failed=1>

import.total
# => 3

Extended API

You may want to pass an excel file per instance. You can also define your own import behavior by passing a block to the run method:

import = UserImport.new("users/all.xlsx")
import.run do |row|
  User.create!(row) # raise an exception if the data doesn't match your expectations
end

Limitations

Be aware of a few limitations when considering this gem:

  • only supports the first sheet in an excel file
  • only supports .xlsx file format
  • no export, just import

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/manufaktor/excelsior.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.