Reading Excel file using node js

Question

 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);
                });
        })

My current objective is to read the excel file and add each row to my database thereafter.

I'm not exactly sure how I can read the file from Node, though.

Js, I've looked everywhere when debugging my server, but my Angular application is calling the API instead.

Answer 1

Several distinct libraries perform Excel file parsing (.xlsx). I'll mention two initiatives that I think are intriguing and worth investigating.

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 the 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

Data and styles from spreadsheets can be read, edited, and written to XLSX and JSON. It is an ongoing project. The most recent commit has been made nine hours prior to this writing. Although I haven't personally tried it myself, the api seems robust and offers a wide range of possibilities.

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());