Sheets in Drash

Drash is a Deno server-side framework. The body parser works in memory and can handle file uploads on hosted services.

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

This demo uses Drash and SheetJS to read and write data. We'll explore how to parse uploaded files in a POST request handler and respond to GET requests with downloadable spreadsheets.

The "Complete Example" section includes a complete server.

Tested Deployments

This demo was last tested on 2024 March 11 against Drash 2.8.1 and Deno 1.41.2.

Integration Details

The SheetJS Deno module can be imported from Drash server scripts.

Reading Data

Request#bodyParam reads body parameters. For uploaded files, the content property is a Uint8Array which can be parsed with the SheetJS read method¹.

This example server responds to POST requests. The server will look for a file in the request body under the "upload" key. If a file is present, the server will parse the file, generate an HTML table using the sheet_to_html method² and respond with the HTML code:

// @deno-types="https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/package/types/index.d.ts"
import { read, utils } from 'https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/package/xlsx.mjs';

import * as Drash from "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/drashland/[email protected]/mod.ts";

class ParseResource extends Drash.Resource {
  public paths = ["/"];

  public POST(request: Drash.Request, response: Drash.Response) {
    // assume a form upload like <input type="file" id="upload" name="upload">
    const file = request.bodyParam<Drash.Types.BodyFile>("upload");
    if (!file) throw new Error("File is required!");

    // read file
    var wb = read(file.content);

    // respond with HTML from first worksheet
    var ws = wb.Sheets[wb.SheetNames[0]];
    var html = utils.sheet_to_html(html)
    return response.html(html);
  }
}

Writing Data

Headers are manually set with Response#headers.set while the raw body is set with Response#send. The raw body can be Uint8Array or ArrayBuffer objects.

Given a SheetJS workbook object, the write method using type: "buffer"³ generates data objects compatible with Drash.

This example server responds to GET requests. The server will generate a SheetJS worksheet object from an array of arrays⁴, build up a new workbook using the book_new⁵ and book_append_sheet⁶ utility methods, generate a XLSX file using write, and send the file with appropriate headers to initiate a download with file name "SheetJSDrash.xlsx":

// @deno-types="https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/package/types/index.d.ts"
import { utils, write } from 'https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/package/xlsx.mjs';

import * as Drash from "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/drashland/[email protected]/mod.ts";

class WriteResource extends Drash.Resource {
  public paths = ["/export"];

  public GET(request: Drash.Request, response: Drash.Response): void {
    // create some fixed workbook
    const data = ["SheetJS".split(""), [5,4,3,3,7,9,5]];
    const ws = utils.aoa_to_sheet(data);
    const wb = utils.book_new(); utils.book_append_sheet(wb, ws, "data");
  
    // write the workbook to XLSX as a Uint8Array
    const file = write(wb, { bookType: "xlsx", type: "buffer"});
    // set headers
    response.headers.set("Content-Disposition", 'attachment; filename="SheetJSDrash.xlsx"');
    // send data
    return response.send("application/vnd.ms-excel", file);
  }
}

Complete Example

1. Download SheetJSDrash.ts:

curl -LO https://docs.sheetjs.com/drash/SheetJSDrash.ts

2. Run the server:

deno run --allow-net SheetJSDrash.ts

3. Download the test file https://docs.sheetjs.com/pres.numbers

4. Open http://localhost:7262/ in your browser.

Click "Choose File" and select pres.numbers. Then click "Submit"

The page should show the contents of the file as an HTML table.

5. Open http://localhost:7262/export in your browser.

The page should attempt to download SheetJSDrash.xlsx . Open the new file.

Footnotes

1. See read in "Reading Files" ↩

2. See sheet_to_html in "Utilities" ↩

3. See write in "Writing Files" ↩

4. See aoa_to_sheet in "Utilities" ↩

5. See book_new in "Utilities" ↩

6. See book_append_sheet in "Utilities" ↩