fxl (/ˈfɪk.səl/ or "pixel" with an f) is a Clojure library for manipulating spreadsheets.

WARNING! This library is still unstable. Some information here may be outdated. Do not use it in production just yet!

See docjure and excel-clj for more mature alternatives.

Introduction

The goal of the project is to provide a composable data-oriented spreadsheet interface for Clojure. The library is written with simplicity in mind - particularly as discussed in Rich Hickey's talk Simplicity Matters on the list-and-order problem.

If order matters, complexity has been introduced to the system

— Rich Hickey, Simplicity Matters

What fxl attempts to do differently to docjure and excel-clj is to represent spreadsheets as an unordered collection of maps, instead of relying on tabular formats. This makes it easier to deal with independent, smaller components of the spreadsheet and simply apply concat to put together different components of a spreadsheet.

Examples

Map Representation of Cells

A fxl cell is represented by a map that tells us its value, location and style. For instance:

{:value -2.2
 :coord {:row 4 :col 3 :sheet "Growth"}
 :style {:data-format "0.00%" :background-colour :yellow}}

is rendered as a highlighted cell with a value of "-2.2%" on the fifth row and fourth column of a sheet called "Growth".

By knowing cells, you know almost all of fxl! The rest of the library is composed of IO functions such as read-xlsx! and write-xlsx! and helper functions to transform Clojure data structures into cell maps.

To find out more about the available styles, see their specs.

Creating Simple Spreadsheets with Builtin Clojure

Suppose we would like to create a spreadsheet such as the following:

| Item     | Cost     |
| -------- | -------- |
| Rent     | 1000     |
| Gas      | 100      |
| Food     | 300      |
| Gym      | 50       |
|          |          |
| Total    | 1450     |

Assume that we have the cost data in the following form:

(def costs
  [{:item "Rent" :cost 1000}
   {:item "Gas"  :cost 100}
   {:item "Food" :cost 300}
   {:item "Gym"  :cost 50}]

We would break the spreadsheet down into three components, namely the header, the body and the total:

(require '[zero-one.fxl.core :as fxl])

(def header-cells
  [{:value "Item" :coord {:row 0 :col 0} :style {}}
   {:value "Cost" :coord {:row 0 :col 1} :style {}}])

(def body-cells
  (flatten
    (for [[row cost] (map vector (range) costs)]
      (list
        {:value (:item cost) :coord {:row (inc row) :col 0} :style {}}
        {:value (:cost cost) :coord {:row (inc row) :col 1} :style {}}))))

(def total-cells
  (let [row        (count costs)
        total-cost (apply + (map :cost costs))]
    [{:value "Total"    :coord {:row (+ row 2) :col 0} :style {}}
     {:value total-cost :coord {:row (+ row 2) :col 1} :style {}}]))

(fxl/write-xlsx!
  (concat header-cells body-cells total-cells)
  "examples/spreadsheets/write_to_plain_excel.xlsx")

This works, but dealing with the coordinates are fiddly. We can make the intent clearer using fxl helper functions.

Creating Simple Spreadsheets with Helper Functions

Here we use row->cells, table->cells, pad-below and concat-below to help us initialise and navigate relative coordinates.

(def header-cells (fxl/row->cells ["Item" "Cost"]))

(def body-cells
  (fxl/records->cells [:item :cost] costs))

(def total-cells
  (let [total-cost (apply + (map :cost costs))]
    (fxl/row->cells ["Total" total-cost])))

(fxl/write-xlsx!
  (fxl/concat-below header-cells
                    (fxl/pad-below body-cells)
                    total-cells)
  "examples/spreadsheets/write_to_plain_excel_with_helpers.xlsx")

More helper functions are available - see here.

Modular Styling

With a Clojure-map representation for cells, manipulating the spreadsheet is easy using built-in functions. Suppose we would like to:

1. highlight the header row and make it bold
2. make the total row bold
3. horizontally align all cells to the center

We can achieve this by composing simple styling functions:

(defn bold [cell]
  (assoc-in cell [:style :bold] true))

(defn highlight [cell]
  (assoc-in cell [:style :background-colour] :grey_25_percent))

(defn align-center [cell]
  (assoc-in cell [:style :horizontal] :center))

(def all-cells
  (map align-center
    (fxl/concat-below
      (map (comp bold highlight) header-cells)
      (fxl/pad-below body-cells)
      (map bold total-cells))))

Installation

Add the following to your project.clj dependency:

Future Work

Features:

• Core:
  • Column width and row heights.
  • Freezing panes.
  • Excel coords -> index coords.
  • Support for formulae.
  • Support merged cells.
  • Support data-val cells.
• Support to Google Sheet API.
• Error handling with failjure.
• Property-based testing.

License

Copyright 2020 Zero One Group.

fxl is licensed under Apache License v2.0.