Let Data Glide on Glide Data Grid

Glide Data Grid is a high-performance data grid designed for the ReactJS web framework.

SheetJS is a JavaScript library for reading and writing data from spreadsheets.

This demo uses Glide Data Grid and SheetJS to pull data from a spreadsheet and display the content in a data grid. We'll explore how to import data from files into the data grid and how to export modified data from the grid to workbooks.

The "Demo" section includes a complete example that displays data from user-supplied sheets and exports data to XLSX workbooks:

Glide Data Grid example

Tested Deployments

This demo was tested in the following environments:

Browser	Version	Date
Chromium 125	`5.3.2`	2024-06-09

Integration Details

The "Frameworks" section covers installation with Yarn and other package managers.

Using the npm tool, this command installs SheetJS and Glide Data Grid:

npm i --save https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/xlsx-0.20.3.tgz @glideapps/[email protected]

Methods and components in both libraries can be loaded in pages using import:

import { read, utils, writeFile } from 'xlsx';
import { DataEditor, GridCellKind, GridCell, Item } from '@glideapps/glide-data-grid';

Glide Data Grid is primarily event-based. It does not manage state directly. Instead, developers are expected to manage updates when users edit cells.

Backing Store

Under the hood, the DataEditor component is designed to call methods and request data to display in the grid. It is typical to store data outside of component state. A getCellContent callback will pull data from the external backing store, while SheetJS operations will directly act on the store.

For this demo, there are two parts to the data store:

data is an "Array of Objects" that will hold the raw data¹.
header is an array of the header names

Following the Glide Data Grid conventions², both objects are defined at the top level of the component script. They are declared outside of the component!

// !! THESE ARRAYS ARE DEFINED OUTSIDE OF THE COMPONENT FUNCTION !!

// this will store the raw data objects
let data: any[] = [];
// this will store the header names
let header: string[] = [];

Props

This is a high-level overview. The official documentation should be consulted.³

Columns

DataEditor expects column metadata to be passed through a columns prop. This should be managed in the component state:

import { useState } from 'react';
import { DataEditor, GridColumn } from '@glideapps/glide-data-grid';

function App() {
  const [cols, setCols] = useState<GridColumn[]>([]); // gdg column objects
  // ...
  return ( <>
    // ...
    <DataEditor
      // ... props
      columns={cols}
    />
    // ...
  </> );
}
export default App;

Each GridColumn object expects a title representing the display name and an id representing the key to index within the data object.

Data

The DataEditor component expects a getCellContent callback for supplying data. The callback accepts column and row indices. The column index should be used to find the header key:

import { useCallback } from 'react';
import { DataEditor, GridCellKind, GridCell, Item } from '@glideapps/glide-data-grid';

// ...

function App() {
  // ...
  // backing data store -> gdg
  const getContent = useCallback((cell: Item): GridCell => {
    const [col, row] = cell;
    return {
      kind: GridCellKind.Text,
      // header[col] is the name of the field
      displayData: String(data[row]?.[header[col]]??""),
      data: data[row]?.[header[col]],
    };
  }, []);
  // ...
  return ( <>
    // ...
    <DataEditor
      // ... props
      getCellContent={getContent}
    />
    // ...
  </> );
}

Row Count

DataEditor also accepts a rows property indicating the number of rows. This is best managed in state:

import { useState } from 'react';
import { DataEditor } from '@glideapps/glide-data-grid';

function App() {
  const [rows, setRows] = useState<number>(0); // number of rows
  // ...
  return ( <>
    // ...
    <DataEditor
      // ... props
      rows={rows}
    />
    // ...
  </> );
}
export default App;

Editing Data

The demo uses the onCellEdited callback to write back to the data store.

Parsing Data

SheetJS to Data Store

The SheetJS read method parses data from a number of sources⁴. It returns a workbook object which holds worksheet objects and other data⁵.

Raw data objects can be generated with the SheetJS sheet_to_json function⁶.

The headers can be pulled from the first row of the sheet. The sheet_to_json method accepts a range option, and other SheetJS API functions can be used to calculate the correct range for the header names⁷.

This example generates row objects from the first sheet in the workbook:

import { utils, WorkBook } from 'xlsx';

// ...

const update_backing_store = (wb: WorkBook) => {
  // get first worksheet
  const sheet = wb.Sheets[wb.SheetNames[0]];

  // set data
  data = utils.sheet_to_json<any>(sheet);

  // create a range consisting of the first row
  const range = utils.decode_range(sheet["!ref"]??"A1"); // original range
  range.e.r = range.s.r; // set ending row to starting row (select first row)

  // pull headers
  header = utils.sheet_to_json<string[]>(sheet, {header: 1, range})[0];
};

// ...

Importing from Data Store

Scheduling a refresh for the DataEditor involves updating the grid column metadata and row count through the standard state. It also requires a special updateCells call to instruct the grid to mark the cached data as stale:

import { useRef } from 'react'
import { WorkBook } from 'xlsx'
import { DataEditor, GridColumn, Item, DataEditorRef } from '@glideapps/glide-data-grid'

function App() {
  const ref = useRef<DataEditorRef>(null); // gdg ref
  // ...
  const parse_wb = (wb: WorkBook) => {
    update_backing_store(wb);

    // update column metadata by pulling from external header keys
    setCols(header.map(h => ({title: h, id: h} as GridColumn)));

    // update number of rows
    setRows(data.length);

    if(data.length > 0) {
      // create an array of the cells that must be updated
      let cells = data.map(
        (_,R) => Array.from({length:header.length}, (_,C) => ({cell: ([C,R] as Item)}))
      ).flat();
      // initiate update using the `ref` attached to the DataEditor
      ref.current?.updateCells(cells)
    }
  };
  // ...
  return ( <>
    // ...
    <DataEditor
      // ... props
      ref={ref}
    />
    // ...
  </> );
}
export default App;

Writing Data

The SheetJS json_to_sheet method generates worksheet objects directly from the data array⁸:

const ws = utils.json_to_sheet(data); // easy :)

The worksheet can be exported to XLSX by creating a SheetJS workbook object⁹ and writing with writeFile or writeFileXLSX¹⁰:

const wb = utils.book_new();
utils.book_append_sheet(wb, ws, "Sheet1");
writeFileXLSX(wb, "sheetjs-gdg.xlsx");

Since the editor can change the header titles, it is strongly recommended to pull column data from the state and rewrite the header row:

import { utils, writeFileXLSX } from 'xlsx';

function App() {
  // ...
  const exportXLSX = useCallback(() => {
    // generate worksheet using data with the order specified in the columns array
    const ws = utils.json_to_sheet(data, {header: cols.map(c => c.id ?? c.title)});

    // rewrite header row with titles
    utils.sheet_add_aoa(ws, [cols.map(c => c.title ?? c.id)], {origin: "A1"});

    // create workbook
    const wb = utils.book_new();
    utils.book_append_sheet(wb, ws, "Export"); // replace with sheet name
    // download file
    writeFileXLSX(wb, "sheetjs-gdg.xlsx");
  }, []);
  // ...
  return ( <>
    // ...
    <button onClick={exportXLSX}><b>Export XLSX!</b></button>
    // ...
  </> );
}
export default App;

Demo

Create a new project from the react-ts template:

npm create vite@latest -- sheetjs-gdg --template react-ts
cd sheetjs-gdg
npm i

Install SheetJS and Glide Data Grid libraries:

npm i --save https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/xlsx-0.20.3.tgz @glideapps/[email protected]

Start dev server:

npm run dev

The terminal window will display a URL (typically http://localhost:5173). Open the URL with a web browser and confirm that a page loads.

Download App.tsx and replace src/App.tsx:

curl -L -o src/App.tsx https://docs.sheetjs.com/gdg/App.tsx

Testing

Refresh the browser window. A grid should be displayed:

glide-data-grid initial view

The demo downloads and processes https://docs.sheetjs.com/pres.numbers .

Make some changes to the grid data.

Some statisticians believe President Grover Cleveland should be counted once. That would imply President Clinton should be index 41 and the indices of the other presidents should be decremented.

Double-click on each cell in the Index column and decrement each value. The new values should be 41, 42, 43, 44, and 45, as shown in the screenshot below:

glide-data-grid after edits

Click on the "Export" button. The browser should attempt to download a XLSX file (sheetjs-gdg.xlsx). Save the file.

Open the generated file and verify the contents match the grid.

Reload the page. The contents will revert back to the original table.
Click "Choose File" and select the new sheetjs-gdg.xlsx file. The table should update with the data in the file.

See "Array of Objects" in the ReactJS demo ↩
The "Story" section of the "Getting Started" page in the Glide Data Grid Storybook stores an Array of Objects outside of the component. ↩
See the "Data" section in DataEditorProps in the Glide Data Grid API documentation. ↩
See read in "Reading Files" ↩
See "SheetJS Data Model" ↩
See sheet_to_json in "Utilities" ↩
"Addresses and Ranges" covers general concepts and utility functions including decode_range. ↩
See "Array of Objects Input" in "Utilities" ↩
See "Workbook Helpers" in "Utilities" for details on book_new and book_append_sheet. ↩
See writeFile in "Writing Files" ↩

Integration Details​

Backing Store​

Props​

Parsing Data​

Writing Data​

Demo​

Footnotes​