Question

Hello!

I have this trouble: I’m searching reports by date and in html view everything is alright, BUT when I’m rendering xls view error appear, because it didn’t receive params, so I need to pass them in URL for xls link_to generator.

My controller:

def show
  @website = Website.find(params[:id])
  if params[:report] && params[:report][:start_date] && params[:report][:end_date]
    #search_by_created_at
    @performance_reports = @website.performance_reports.where("created_at between ? and ?", params[:report][:start_date].to_date, params[:report][:end_date].to_date)
  else
    @performance_reports = @website.performance_reports
  end
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html # index.html.erb
    format.xls
    format.xml  { render :xml => @performance_reports }
  end
end

and my generated url looks like:

 http://127.0.0.1:3000/websites/25/performance_reports/show?utf8=%E2%9C%93&report[end_date]=07%2F09%2F2012&report[start_date]=04%2F09%2F2012&commit=Run+Report

mine xls url is generated like this:

 <%= link_to url_for(:format => 'xls')  do%>
   <%= image_tag("excel.png", :id => "analytics",:size => '21x23')%> <b>Export</b>
 <% end %>

result:

http://127.0.0.1:3000/websites/25/performance_reports/show

Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

xls in not available by default.

Add this:

gem "spreadsheet"
gem "to_xls", :git => "https://github.com/dblock/to_xls.git", :branch => "to-xls-on-models"

Register the Excel MIME type in config/initializers/mime_types.rb by adding this:

Mime::Type.register "application/vnd.ms-excel", :xls

Add an as_xls method to model that you want to export for the fields you want.
For example for a User model you might have:

def as_xls(options = {})
  {
      "Id" => id.to_s,
      "Name" => name,
      "E-Mail" => email,
      "Joined" => created_at,
      "Last Signed In" => last_sign_in_at,
      "Sign In Count" => sign_in_count
  }
end

Add code to the controller:

def index
  @users = User.all
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html
    format.xls { send_data @users.to_xls, content_type: 'application/vnd.ms-excel', filename: 'users.xls' }
  end
end

Provide a link:

= link_to 'Export', users_path(request.parameters.merge({:format => :xls}))

All code should have a test. You could do something like this:

describe "GET index.xls" do
  it "creates an Excel spreadsheet with all users" do      
    user = Fabricate :user
    get :index, :format => :xls
    response.headers['Content-Type'].should == "application/vnd.ms-excel"
    s = Spreadsheet.open(StringIO.new(response.body))
    s.worksheets.count.should == 1
    w = s.worksheet(0)
    w.should_not be_nil
    w.row(0)[0].should == "Id"
    w.row(1)[0].should == user.id.to_s
    w.row(0)[1].should == "Name"
    w.row(1)[1].should == user.name
  end
end