Reading XLS/XLSX Data With JavaScript in NetSuite - javascript

I'm looking into potentially building code for NetSuite to read the contents of an Excel file (XLS or XLSX) within JavaScript in order to process the data. I can do this just fine with a CSV file, but I'd like to expand capabilities to read Excel worksheets.
I've seen a variety of scripts to read in Excel files, but they all seem to revolve around a dependency of Internet Explorer, and none of them seem to offer a solution on how to get the used columns and rows. They assume you already know this information ahead of time. NetSuite being what it is, these solutions don't really work, and you have to grab the base64 encoded contents of the file object stored in the system. This isn't an issue with CSV files, it's still just plain text.
I've done some testing and found that I get different results when trying to decode the string (I get something from XLS, but nothing from XLSX). I was wondering if anyone has tried and succeeded and reading data from these files formats in a NetSuite JavaScript implementation. If there's no good way, then I'll just have to force use of CSV, but I'd like to have some flexibility.

Essentially, you are asking for a javascript implementation of XLS and XLSX parsers. It is incredibly difficult, mostly due to the nature of the data format and the sheer amount of parsing required to get basic data).
I have built a basic version:
http://oss.sheetjs.com/js-xls/ (xls)
http://oss.sheetjs.com/js-xlsx/ (xlsx)

Related

How to detect the file type if it's an excel file in JavaScript on the web?

I am using the FileReader() API to read files on the browser, I want to render something on the screen conditionally based on the file the user uploads:
JSON.
CSV.
Excel.
How can I detect if the file uploaded is an excel file? Do you use libraries for that or is there a genius way we can detect that blindly without going through all the chances?
Running out of space in comments, so I'll add an answer. Files will usually have an extension, on both Windows and Linux, but if you don't want to rely on that you can just try parsing the file in each of the formats to find the one that succeeds.
JSON use JSON.parse()
Excel see this question for .xlsx or this one for .xls, or use one of the many NPM packages
CSV the format is pretty simple, but there are gotchas for commas in the values. Some of the libraries are pretty efficient at streaming large files, so probably worth using an NPM package again

Exporting data to excel using javascript under following constraint

I have a project on exporting data to excel using JavaScript. But the constraints are : It should work for all browsers unlike ActiveXObject(that works only for Internet Explorer), window.open(that doesn't works for internet explorer).
It should not depend on other applications like Flash (I have seen a code using jQuery and Flash, but I can't use that in my project) e.t.c.
Please tell me whether it is possible and if it is, then suggest me a method to do this...
And one more thing, Manual work shouldn't be there or if it is, then it should be very less. In other words, it should be completely automated.
Suggestions:
use CSV file format and write a CSV writer in JavaScript yourself
use Microsoft's Office Open XML file format (xlsx) and write JavaScript code that generates such a file (should not be too difficult as it is XML based and there should be a lot of code around generating XML in JavaScript)

In-browser conversion of MS Word document to PDF

I would like to implement an in-browser Microsoft Word document merge feature that will convert the merged document into PDF and offer it to the user for download. I would like to this process to be supported in Google Chrome and Firefox. Here is how I would like it to work:
Client-side JavaScript obtains the Word template document in docx format, either from a server, or by asking the user for a file upload (which it can then read using the FileReader API)
The JavaScript uses its local data structures (e.g., data lists it has obtained via Ajax) to expand the template into a document. It can do this either directly, by unzipping the docx file and processing its contents, or using DOCx.js. The template expansion is just a matter of substituting template variables with values obtained from the local data structures.
The JavaScript then converts the expanded template into PDF.
The JavaScript offers the PDF file to the user for download, e.g., using Downloadify.
The difficulty I am having is in step 3. My understanding (based on all the Googling I have done so far) is that I have the following options:
Require that the local machine is a Windows machine, and invoke Word on it, to convert to PDF. This can be done using a little bit of scripting using WScript.shell, and it looks doable with Internet Explorer. But based on what I have read, it doesn't look like I can call WScript.shell from within either Chrome or Firefox, because of their security constraints.
I am open to trying Silverlight to do the conversion, but I have not found enough documentation on how to do this. Ideally, if I used Silverlight, I would like to write the Silverlight code in JavaScript, because (a) I don't know much CSharp, and (b) I think it would be much easier in JavaScript.
Create a web service that will convert a given docx file to a pdf file, and invoke that service via Ajax. I would rather not do this, if possible, for a few reasons: (a) I tried using docx4java (I am a reasonably skilled Java programmer) but the conversion process is far too slow, and it does not preserve document content very well; and (b) I would like to avoid a call out to the network, to avoid security issues. It does seem possible to write a little service on a Windows server for doing the conversion, and if there is no other good option, I might go that route.
If I have been unclear about anything, please let me know. I would appreciate your ideas and feedback.
I love command line tools.
Load the doc to your server and use LibreOffice to convert it to PDF via the command line
soffice.exe --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir E:\Docs\Out E:\Docs\In\a.doc
You can display a progress bar to the user and when complete give them the option to download the doc.
More info on LibreOffice's command line parameters go here
Done.
Old old question now, but for anyone who stumbles across this, web assembly (wasm) now makes this sort of approach possible.
We've just released https://www.npmjs.com/package/#nativedocuments/docx-wasm which can perform the conversion locally.

How to use the HTML5 file API to read a pre-specified file?

All the tutorials for the HTML5 file API talk about getting the FileList from a text box. I already have the name of the file (e.g. foo.json), I can't figure out how to read a file given a file name.
This is not for a web app. I'm producing some data in JSON format, and I'd like to format it using Javascript, essentially producing some interactive bar charts. Much in the way that XML can be formatted with XSLT, I want to distribute a JSON file along with some JavaScript code, and when someone clicks the JavaScript file, they have a simple interactive exploration of the data.
So my first problem is to read the JSON file from Javascript. Note that there's no webserver involved.
The short answer is "You can't". It's a security issue; if you find a way please submit a bug report to the browser bug-tracker. Its not even possible to pre-fill the dialog with a filename.
However, for your specific usecase; there doesn't seem to be a need to read a separate file at all. Just include the data as a literal in your JavaScript code.

Create database in memory from sql/csv files in Javascript

I am creating a product that as end result will/can create e.g. 10 .sql files, each being a table. The tables will contain various pre-calculated data related to each other.
My users will need to upload these to their website (php, asp, whatever) and will need to make something useful. Only problem, the users may have next to zero understanding of databases, server-side code etc. This means it must be very easy to configure.
So I think thinking upload these .sql (or CSV files, whatever) tables to server, so they are publicly available (i.e. can be retrieved like any other public URL). And then find a Javascript in-memory database engine that can load .sql database files. Does this exist?
I imagine a Javascript solution could work well if amount of data could be kept somewhat down... Otherwise I may need to look for a PHP/ASP solution as well. (Any ideas for libraries that can init in-memory databases from .sql or similar files?)
Preferably I should be able to re-distribute this Javascript library. (So users can get a complete "directory" of .sql files + example page + Javascript database engine to upload)
So to make the question clear: Anyone knows a Javascript-based in-memory database engine that can run inside browser?
If you wish to use javascript and need some 'userfriendly' bridge database, you could use json or xml, because the format are simple text files (like csv as well) for wich you can find smart small editors for your users.
More json is made for javascript parsing and has an understanding tree format, but you should load only some part of sql datas in memory, saying data buffers in xml or json, with php requested with some javascript ajax call. Php do the sql database access work and then you can output json, and with javascript, it is for user's interface, you'll be able to display them.
You can use mysql to store a database in memory:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/memory-storage-engine.html
Here's a pure JS SQL engine that stores everything in memory, https://github.com/moxley/sqittle
It flatly denies being useful for anything though, and has a limited set of supported commands (see readme on above link.
http://diveintohtml5.ep.io/storage.html might be what you are looking for.
That question seems very old. You might want to look at LokiJS now.

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