Formatting Excel cell from number to text in rails - excel

Question

I have made an application on which I have provide the feature to import the records from CSV and Excel file. I am using roo gem for it. The record added successfully but the problem is at the time of importing records from excel, it adds .0 to every field which is number. I don't want it because i have some fields like enrollment_no, roll_no, contact_no and it adds .0 to every filed like it made 23 to 23.0. I already had converted these filed to varchar in database and now i want to format the excel cell from number to text. It will solve my problem. Tell me how i will format the excel cell from number to string using rails.
Here is my code for importing the file:
student.rb :
def self.import(file, current_organization_id)
spreadsheet = open_spreadsheet(file)
header = spreadsheet.row(1)
(2..spreadsheet.last_row).each do |i|
row = Hash[[header, spreadsheet.row(i)].transpose]
record = Student.find_by(:organization_id => current_organization_id,:enrollment_no => row["enrollment_no"]) || new
record.organization_id= current_organization_id
record.attributes = row.to_hash.slice(*row.to_hash.keys)
record.save!
end
end
def self.open_spreadsheet(file)
case File.extname(file.original_filename)
when ".csv" then Roo::CSV.new(file.path)
when ".xls" then Roo::Excel.new(file.path)
when ".xlsx" then Roo::Excelx.new(file.path)
else raise "Unknown file type: #{file.original_filename}"
end
end
students_controller.rb :
def import
Student.import(params[:file], session[:current_organization_id])
#puts #session[:current_organization_id].inspect
redirect_to students_path, notice: "Record imported Successfully."
end
new.html.erb :
<%= form_tag import_students_path, multipart: true do %>
<%= file_field_tag :file , :required=> true%> <br/>
<%= submit_tag "Import" , :class => "btn btn-primary btn-block" %>
<% end %>

Answer 1

I am doing something similar in my application but the import is made easier by importing only from csv.
It seems that cell type is a pretty common problem in Roo and there are few workaround suggested using regex or char to include in your cell.
My solution it would be much easier:
# student.rb
COLUMNS_TO_STRING = ["organization_id", "enrollment_no", "contact_no"] # and so on
def self.import(file, current_organization_id)
spreadsheet = open_spreadsheet(file)
header = spreadsheet.row(1)
(2..spreadsheet.last_row).each do |i|
row = Hash[[header, spreadsheet.row(i)].transpose]
row = clean_for row, COLUMNS_TO_STRING
record = Student.find_by(:organization_id => current_organization_id,:enrollment_no => row["enrollment_no"]) || new
record.organization_id= current_organization_id
record.attributes = row.to_hash.slice(*row.to_hash.keys)
record.save!
end
end
def self.clean_for row_as_hash, string_columns_array
row_as_hash.each do |key, value|
if string_columns_array.include?key
row_as_hash[key] = value.to_i.to_s
end
end
end
def self.open_spreadsheet(file)
case File.extname(file.original_filename)
when ".csv" then Roo::CSV.new(file.path)
when ".xls" then Roo::Excel.new(file.path)
when ".xlsx" then Roo::Excelx.new(file.path)
else raise "Unknown file type: #{file.original_filename}"
end
end
get the index of the columns you want to format differently
convert the value imported from float to integer
convert the integer to string