Here is a typical conversation between the developer and the user:
User: "I have uploaded an excel file"
"but your application says un-supported file format"
Developer: "Did you upload an xlsx file or a csv file?"
User: "Well, I am not sure. I saved the data using "
"Microsoft Excel. Surely, it must be in an excel format."
Developer: "OK. Here is the thing. I were not told to support"
"all available excel formats in day 1. Live with it"
"or delay the project x number of days."
Flask-Excel is based on pyexcel and makes it easy to consume/produce information stored in excel files over HTTP protocol as well as on file system. This library can turn the excel data into a list of lists, a list of records(dictionaries), dictionaries of lists. And vice versa. Hence it lets you focus on data in Flask based web development, instead of file formats.
The idea originated from the common usability problem when developing an excel file driven web applications for non-technical office workers: such as office assistant, human resource administrator. The fact is that not all people know the difference among various excel formats: csv, xls, xlsx. Instead of training those people about file formats, this library helps web developers to handle most of the excel file formats by providing a common programming interface. To add a specific excel file format to you application, all you need is to install an extra pyexcel plugin. No code change to your application.
The highlighted features are:
- excel data import into and export from databases
- turn uploaded excel file directly into Python data structure
- pass Python data structures as an excel file download
- provide data persistence as an excel file in server side
- supports csv, tsv, csvz, tsvz by default and other formats are supported via the following plugins:
| Package name | Supported file formats | Dependencies | Python versions |
|---|---|---|---|
| pyexcel-io | csv, csvz [1], tsv, tsvz [2] |
2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, pypy, pypy3 | |
| pyexcel-xls | xls, xlsx(read only), xlsm(read only) |
xlrd, xlwt | 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, pypy, pypy3 |
| pyexcel-xlsx | xlsx | openpyxl | 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, pypy, pypy3 |
| pyexcel-xlsxw | xlsx(write only) | xlsxwriter | 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, pypy, pypy3 |
| pyexcel-ods3 | ods | ezodf, lxml | 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 |
| pyexcel-ods | ods (python 2.6, 2.7) | odfpy | 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 |
| pyexcel-text | (write only)json, rst, mediawiki, html, latex, grid, pipe, orgtbl, plain simple | tabulate | 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 pypy, pypy3 |
Footnotes
| [1] | zipped csv file |
| [2] | zipped tsv file |
This library makes information processing involving various excel files as easy as processing array, dictionary when processing file upload/download, data import into and export from SQL databases, information analysis and persistence. It uses pyexcel and its plugins:
- to provide one uniform programming interface to handle csv, tsv, xls, xlsx, xlsm and ods formats.
- to provide one-stop utility to import the data in uploaded file into a database and to export tables in a database as excel files for file download.
- to provide the same interface for information persistence at server side: saving a uploaded excel file to and loading a saved excel file from file system.
Fonts, colors and charts are not supported.
You can install it via pip:
$ pip install Flask-Excelor clone it and install it:
$ git clone http://github.com/pyexcel/Flask-Excel.git
$ cd Flask-Excel
$ python setup.py installHere are some example codes:
from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
from flask.ext import excel
app=Flask(__name__)
@app.route("/upload", methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def upload_file():
if request.method == 'POST':
return jsonify({"result": request.get_array(field_name='file')})
return '''
<!doctype html>
<title>Upload an excel file</title>
<h1>Excel file upload (csv, tsv, csvz, tsvz only)</h1>
<form action="" method=post enctype=multipart/form-data>
<p><input type=file name=file><input type=submit value=Upload>
</form>
'''
@app.route("/export", methods=['GET'])
def export_records():
return excel.make_response_from_array([[1,2], [3, 4]], "csv",
file_name="export_data")
if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run()New BSD License