How do I read the content of an Excel spreadsheet using Ruby?

Question

I am trying to read an Excel spreadsheet file with Ruby, but it is not reading the content of the file.

This is my script

book = Spreadsheet.open \'         


        

Answer 1

I don't think you need to require parseexcel, just require 'spreadsheet'

Have you read the guide, it is super easy to follow.

Answer 2

It looks like row, whose class is Spreadsheet::Excel::Row is effectively an Excel Range and that it either includes Enumerable or at least exposes some enumerable behaviours, #each, for example.

So you might rewrite your script something like this:

require 'spreadsheet'    
book = Spreadsheet.open('myexcel.xls')
sheet1 = book.worksheet('Sheet1') # can use an index or worksheet name
sheet1.each do |row|
  break if row[0].nil? # if first cell empty
  puts row.join(',') # looks like it calls "to_s" on each cell's Value
end

Note that I've parenthesised arguments, which is generally advisable these days, and removed the semi-colons, which are not necessary unless you're writing multiple statement on a line (which you should rarely - if ever - do).

It's probably a hangover from a larger script, but I'll point out that in the code given the book and sheet1 variables aren't really needed, and that Spreadsheet#open takes a block, so a more idiomatic Ruby version might be something like this:

require 'spreadsheet'    
Spreadsheet.open('MyTestSheet.xls') do |book|
  book.worksheet('Sheet1').each do |row|
    break if row[0].nil?
    puts row.join(',')
  end
end

Answer 3

Is it a one line file? If so you need:

puts row[0];