1

I have a rails application. In my application I am generating various reports in CSV formats.

Now due to some issues with header and truncation of data in CSV. I want to save CSV file in to xls format excel files.

Which is the best way to achieve this?

I am having option of spreadsheet gem.

But with that I have to rewrite my code again for xls excel files. My whole code is already written to generate CSV. I am generating CSV reports on 15 places.

So please help me i want just to convert my csv files to xls files while generating the files in CSV i will export it directly in to xls format

Please suggest!!

Sumit Munot
  • 3,748
  • 1
  • 32
  • 51
  • 1
    1) If you're doing exactly the same thing in 15 places you're doing something very wrong. 2) XLS files are quite different to CSV files so I don't think you can convert them easily. I've used the `spreadsheet` gem before and it's quite straightforward. I would just write some new code to generate XLS spreadsheets. 3) You could just import CSV files into Excel? – Jon Jan 16 '14 at 23:11
  • Hi @Jon, thanks for your response, as those 15 reports are different and data is also different so i have written the code to generate CSV on 15 places. So is there any easy way or any kind of gems that will directly change my generated csv to xls? – Sumit Munot Jan 16 '14 at 23:30
  • 1
    As I said, I don't think so. I would personally generate the XLS files yourself from the source data rather than trying to bodge it from a CSV file. Long term you should be supporting the code you really need. Imagine needing a change to the XLS files and having to code the changes into the CSV generation and hoping that the conversion still worked. I'd just do it properly with the spreadsheet gem. – Jon Jan 16 '14 at 23:33
  • Hey @Jon, yes - that is the last way i am going to do. I will write a generic method to do it and i will call each time that method to generate XLS from existing code by passing data array. – Sumit Munot Jan 17 '14 at 15:16

1 Answers1

0

All you need to do is use a different extension. Excel will open a CSV file with the .xls extension just fine, and if it is re-saved, it will be converted to a proper Excel file.

Alyssa Ross
  • 2,169
  • 16
  • 26
  • Yes @Ross, but we are not going to do manual work to save each time in .XLS manually. I want to get it done through my program. – Sumit Munot Jan 17 '14 at 15:14
  • Right, but is there a need to? If somebody downloads a CSV file from your site with an .xls file extension, it's going to appear just like a regular Excel file to them, right? – Alyssa Ross Jan 17 '14 at 23:17