pyExcelerator (xlwt) cheatsheet (create native Excel from pure python)

If you are looking to generate/create/write (but not read) excel spreadsheets from native python (read on linux or macos or even Windows!), then xlwt (a fork of pyExcelerator) is your friend. This library, (and the ancestor) is somewhat unknown, but quite good. The only real problem with using it is that documentation (and the bug I mention below), (though this blog post is pretty good) is somewhat spotty. But you can usually get around dearth of docs by reading the code that reveals that the internal model for .xls documents is quite good, and that is supports most features (sans graphing). The original MIA author did quite a good job.

I've made a cheatsheet(pdf) for these tools. Inkscape still has some issues exporting this but here's the source for it (and the formattings bad, but I thought I'd just get it out there). It's an executable cheatsheet, so if you run it (the .py not the .pdf), it will create a spreadsheet. Hopefully this is useful to some folks. I've also tried to embed docs into the code that will serve as useful hints.

Also, I'm using a factory to reuse styles and fonts, as it seems that if you define too many of them, Excel has problems and crashes (note that OOo won't manifest them and happily plugs along on the non-conforming files). Please send any feedback or comments on how this could be more useful.

Also note, this is the .xls format, not the newer xml/ISO/.xlsx stuff

tags: python  xlwt  pyexcelerator  cheatsheet  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit