in reply to writing with WriteExcel in OO style


When you encapsulate Spreadsheet::WriteExcel objects or sub-objects like this you have to explicitly call the workbook close() method to ensure that the sub-objects are destroyed in the correct order. This is due to what I believe is a bug in DESTROY.

Also, the functionality that you are implementing via your writerow() method is already available through the Spreadsheet::WriteExcel write_row() or write() methods if you have version 0.34 or later. ;-) 

    @array      = ('awk', 'gawk', 'mawk');
    $array_ref  = \@array;
    
    $worksheet->write_row(0, 0, $array_ref);
    
    # The above example is equivalent to:
    $worksheet->write(0, 0, $array[0]);
    $worksheet->write(0, 1, $array[1]);
    $worksheet->write(0, 2, $array[2]);

[download]

--
John.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: writing with WriteExcel in OO style
by axelrose (Scribe) on Mar 26, 2002 at 18:37 UTC
    Thanks for your help, John, and of course for writing the module!!

    I know about write_row() and write_col() but they don't fit my need. The data from a database comes in rows. I want to write them immediately and need a different format for each column. So I planned to extend my writerow() method to accept not only an arrayref to the data but also a second arrayref for the format of ach column.

    Do I reinvent the wheel?
[reply]

      Do I reinvent the wheel?

      No. :-)

      The set_column() method should allow you to set the format for a column and then have that applied to all data written to the column. However, it doesn't currently work like that and it should really be fixed.

      An easy way of adding new methods to the Worksheet class, or to any of the other classes, is to do something like this: 

          #!/usr/bin/perl -w

    use strict;
    use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

    my $workbook  = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new("test.xls");
    my $worksheet = $workbook->addworksheet();

    $worksheet->write   ('A1', "Hello");
    $worksheet->uc_write('A2', "Hello"); # New method

    #
    # The following will be appended to
    # Spreadsheet::WriteExcel::Worksheet
    #
    package Spreadsheet::WriteExcel::Worksheet;


    #
    # uc_write: A worksheet method that does ...
    #
    sub uc_write {

        my $self  = shift;

        $self->write($_[0], uc $_[1]);
    }

      [download]

      In the example directory of the Spreadsheet::WriteExcel distro the write_many.pl and comments.pl programs use this methodology.

      However, this is only suitable for simple or one-off solutions. If you need to do anything more complicated or maintainable it would probably be better to subclass the Worksheet class.

      --
      John.

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom