README

NOTE: the parseexcel developer has retired this codeline in favor of ruby-spreadsheet:

http://github.com/jacobat/ruby-spreadsheet/tree/master


Spreadsheet::ParseExcel - Get information from an Excel file.
============
Version: 0.5.2
Date: 2007-07-19

Short Description:
Spreadsheet::ParseExcel allows you to get information out of a 
simple Excel file
This Package is an - as of today incomplete - translation of 
Kawai Takanoris Perl-Module.


Requirements
------------

  * ruby 1.8
	
Install
-------

  De-Compress archive and enter its top directory.
  Then type:

    $ ruby install.rb config
    $ ruby install.rb setup
   ($ su)
    # ruby install.rb install

  You can also install files into your favorite directory
  by supplying install.rb with some options. Try "ruby install.rb --help".
  More information can be found in the redistributed file usage-en.txt


Usage
-----
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'parseexcel'

# your first step is always reading in the file.
# that gives you a workbook-object, which has one or more worksheets,
# just like in Excel you have the possibility of multiple worksheets.
workbook = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel.parse(path_to_file)

# usually, you want the first worksheet:
worksheet = workbook.worksheet(0)

# now you can either iterate over all rows, skipping the first number of
# rows (in case you know they just contain column headers)
skip = 2
worksheet.each(skip) { |row|
  # a row is actually just an Array of Cells..
  first_cell = row.at(0)

  # how you get data out of the cell depends on what datatype you
  # expect:

  # if you expect a String, you can pass an encoding and (iconv
  # required) the content of the cell will be converted.
  str = row.at(1).to_s('latin1')

  # if you expect a Float:
  float = row.at(2).to_f

  # if you expect an Integer:
  int = row.at(3).to_i

  # if you expect a Date:
  date = row.at(4).date

  # ParseExcel makes a guess at what Datatype a cell has. At the moment,
        # possible values are: :date, :numeric, :text
        celltype = first_cell.type
}

# if you know exactly which row your data resides in, you may just
# retrieve that row, which is again simply an Array of Cells
row = worksheet.row(26)


License
-------

	LGPL

	
URL: http://download.ywesee.com/parseexcel
Author: Hannes Wyss <hwyss@ywesee.com>