Development discussion for ExcelImportExportAddOn

-- ClausLanghans - 13 Aug 2006

Claus, first, let me say that this addon is a very good idea. Many people are in need of this capabilty, but cannot rely on installing things in Excel, as most other approaches require. But...

I looked at your code... actually, I only studied the excel 2 topics part. With all due respect, I cannot understand how your code could have been working. There were so many things I had to fix before I could to get it to execute that leads me to wonder what TWiki installation you are working on. Certainly not on TWiki4, based on what I see in the code, but not in Cairo either.

Anyway, I have the excel2topics script running now, generating the topics you described. I sure could have used that a year ago... I still need to do the other direction...

The capability I actually need more is to take the Excel and generate a TWiki table from it and insert it into the topic, and vice versa, but that should not be too hard to do based on your example.

I have not gotten to study the security questions, as I was enthralled with getting the code to work. The most obvious thing that could go wrong is that the users are putting filenames into the Excel file which do malicious things. There needs to be a taint check before the topic is saved. Actually, if you run with -T your current code will not allow you to write the topics anyway...

-- ThomasWeigert - 07 Aug 2006

Cool, thank you Claus for sharing this add-on with the TWikiCommunity. This is a very good fit for the TWikiMission.

A made a few small changes to the add-on topic. Please feel free to take this into the next release. I also tagged the add-on topic so that people can find it easily. If you are interested in seeing this early in the tag search, help vote on the tags.

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Aug 2006

I moved the sample topics from the Plugins web to the Sandbox web: IssueExcelExportImport, IssueTemplate, IssueTrackingForm, IssueTracker

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Aug 2006

I would love to see this work. I always have excel sheets that need to be put into TWiki. It would make the whole process much more simple.

-- PaulDzubinski - 21 Aug 2006

This is what TWiki.pm says about the version I use: 02 Sep 2004 Rev 1742

Thomas, do you mind sharing your copy of excel2topic so that I can incorporate your changes and make it usable for everyone.

-- ClausLanghans - 02 Sep 2006

Of course not. I have not uploaded yet, as I wanted to integrate the two functions, export/import to a single table vs. export/import to a set of topics, better. Right now there is a bunch of duplicated code. But I can upload the current state, if so desired. Sorry for the delay....

-- ThomasWeigert - 02 Sep 2006

Thomas, I attached both scripts to this topic. Pls attach your version as well. I made a lot of changes to excel2topics.

-- ClausLanghans - 04 Sep 2006

Claus, I created a plugin out of your scripts, and also edited the scripts so that they work for me. There is currently quite some code duplication, which I would like to remove.

I will also look at your new scripts, but will be busy in the next days. Maybe you want to check out the plugin in the meantime...

Note that the plugin requires TWiki4...

-- ThomasWeigert - 06 Sep 2006

I have problems running the example.

I get the following error message: "/Sandbox/IssueExcelExportImport/IssueExcelExportImport.xls doesn't exist." when importing the xls file. (Generating the xls worked fine)

The physical file location is {TWikiRoot}/pub//Sandbox/IssueExcelExportImport/IssueExcelExportImport.xls

Thanks

-- DagFrodeOlsen - 14 Sep 2006

BTW... I was using the scripts attached to this topic

-- DagFrodeOlsen - 14 Sep 2006

Does this plugin SupportPivotTables ?

-- KeithHelfrich - 17 Feb 2007

I have problem exporting edit table to Excel sheet. Editable in the cairo version: When web query was employed from Excel to pull in edit tables it was not a problem- we could pull up separate edit tables using the yellow tabs However in the present dakar version: this is not possible at all. Anyone can please help to solve this issue.

-- SheetalPatil - 16 Jan 2008

It is working absolutely fine with Nat Skin but I am having problem with Pattern skin on Dakar version.

-- SheetalPatil - 16 Jan 2008

Hi,

The zip file have a few missing files.

example :

data/TWiki/ExcelImportExportAddOn.txt     Add-on topic
data/TWiki/ExcelImportExportAddOn.txt,v

It has only following list:

pub/Sandbox/IssueExcelExportImport/IssueExcelExportImport.xls
bin/excel2topics
bin/topics2excel
data/Sandbox/IssueUserCanNotFindTheOnButton4.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueTemplate.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueTracker.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueUserHasNoClueHowToUseTheSystem1.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueKeyboardChairError3.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueTrackingForm.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueExcelExportImport.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueTracking.txt
data/Sandbox/IssueTheBarProblem2.txt

Am i missing anything?

-- SopanShewale - 21 Jul 2008

Sopan - i believe ExcelImportExportPlugin represents somewhat more recent version of essentially same code. I just posted notes about problems I've seen with that plugin. I should would love to see some version of this code returned to full working order for latest version of TWiki!

-- LynnwoodBrown - 21 Jul 2008