Reading Excel file using node.js

Question

Okay so i am using the FileUploader module to upload my file from angular to my REST API:

var uploader = $scope.uploader = new FileUploader({
    url: api.getUrl('uploadCompetence',null)
});

This is sent to the following POST function:

        router.route('/api/uploadCompetence')
        .post(function (req, res) {

        // This is where i want to read the file

            var competence = Competence.build(req.body.location);
            competence.add(function (success) {
                    res.json({message: 'quote created!'});
                },
                function (err) {
                    res.status(err).send(err);
                });
        })

Now my goal is to read the excel file and then add each row to my database.

However im not quite sure how i can read the file from Node.js i have debugged my server and couldnt find the file anywhere but the the api is being called from my Angular application

Can anyone push me in the right direction? :)

Answer 1

There are a few different libraries doing parsing of Excel files (.xlsx). I will list two projects I find interesting and worth looking into.

Node-xlsx

Excel parser and builder. It's kind of a wrapper for a popular project JS-XLSX, which is a pure javascript implementation from the Office Open XML spec.

node-xlsx project page

Example for parsing file

var xlsx = require('node-xlsx');

var obj = xlsx.parse(__dirname + '/myFile.xlsx'); // parses a file

var obj = xlsx.parse(fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/myFile.xlsx')); // parses a buffer

ExcelJS

Read, manipulate and write spreadsheet data and styles to XLSX and JSON. It's an active project. At the time of writing the latest commit was 9 hours ago. I haven't tested this myself, but the api looks extensive with a lot of possibilites.

exceljs project page

Code example:

// read from a file
var workbook = new Excel.Workbook();
workbook.xlsx.readFile(filename)
    .then(function() {
        // use workbook
    });

// pipe from stream
var workbook = new Excel.Workbook();
stream.pipe(workbook.xlsx.createInputStream());