Import excel data into models via django admin

Question

I need the Django Admin interface to accept administrator uploads of Excel files where the data in each Excel file is inserted into my database models. How can I make such an “Upload” button appear on a Django model admin page, where clicking the button asks the administrator to choose an .xls file, whose data then gets added to database once its upload is complete?

Answer 1

I'm not sure about the Django side of things, but you can use xlrd to read and manipulate Excel files. There is a free PDF which explains this called Working with Excel files in Python

Answer 2

I have done this, but I just set up a simple view with a file upload (actually this makes more sense than adding it directly into a Django admin page, as one edit page = one model instance,and I assume that your excel contains multiple models).

in forms.py, a simple form with a file upload field

class ImportExcelForm(forms.Form):
    file  = forms.FileField(label= "Choose excel to upload")    

in views.py, a view to process the upload

def test_flowcell(request):
    c = RequestContext(request, {'other_context':'details here'})
    if request.method == 'POST': # If the form has been submitted...
        form = ImportExcelForm(request.POST,  request.FILES) # A form bound to the POST data
        if form.is_valid(): # All validation rules pass
            excel_parser= ExcelParser()
            success, log  = excel_parser.read_excel(request.FILES['file'] )
            if success:
                return redirect(reverse('admin:index') + "pages/flowcell_good/") ## redirects to aliquot page ordered by the most recent
            else:
                errors = '* Problem with flowcell * <br><br>log details below:<br>' + "<br>".join(log)
                c['errors'] = mark_safe(errors)
        else:
            c['errors'] = form.errors 
    else:
        form = ImportExcelForm() # An unbound form
    c['form'] = form
    return render_to_response('sequencing/file_upload.html')

and as suggested in the other post use xlrd to read the data in from the excel file. I have a separate file ExcelParser.py for this

import xlrd 

class ExcelParser(object, excel_name):
    @transaction.commit_on_success        
    def read_excel(self):
        wb = xlrd.open_workbook(excel_name)

        ...
        do your parsing in here.....
        ...

(May I add, that excel is a terrible, and error prone way to import data. I do a lot of it at my work, and am trying to convince management that there are far better solutions.)

Answer 3

django-import-export could be helpful.

It creates two buttons "import" and "export" for admin objects and permits select many types of extensions, including xls. It also show the data do be imported and asks to be confirmed before execute the execution.

You just need to include it in INSTALLED_APPS and create an import-export resource of the class you want to upload and a subclass of ImportExportModelAdmin related to the resource class created before to show buttons in admin.

more info at:

http://django-import-export.readthedocs.org/en/latest/getting_started.html https://github.com/bmihelac/django-import-export.