9.0 KiB
		
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
			
		
		
	
	| title | sidebar_label | pagination_prev | pagination_next | sidebar_custom_props | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Building Sheets with ESBuild | ESBuild | demos/net/index | demos/mobile/index | 
 | 
import current from '/version.js'; import CodeBlock from '@theme/CodeBlock';
ESBuild is a modern build tool for generating static sites. It has a robust JavaScript-powered plugin system1
SheetJS is a JavaScript library for reading and writing data from spreadsheets.
This demo uses ESBuild and SheetJS to pull data from a spreadsheet and display the content in an HTML table. We'll explore how to load SheetJS in a ESBuild loader and generate data for use in webpages.
The "Demo" creates a complete website powered by a XLSX spreadsheet.
:::info pass
This demo covers static asset imports. For processing files in the browser, the "Bundlers" demo includes an example of importing the SheetJS library in a browser script.
:::
ESBuild Loader
ESBuild supports custom loader plugins. The loader receives an absolute path to the spreadsheet on the filesystem.
The SheetJS NodeJS module can be imported from ESBuild loader plugins.
:::info pass
ESBuild loader plugins use ECMAScript Modules. The plugin ultimately receives
raw paths to files. fs
must be manually imported:
import * as XLSX from 'xlsx';
/* load 'fs' for readFile and writeFile support */
import * as fs from 'fs';
XLSX.set_fs(fs);
:::
The following diagram depicts the workbook waltz:
flowchart LR
  subgraph ESBuild Custom Plugin in build.mjs
    file[(workbook\nfile)]
    wb(((SheetJS\nWorkbook)))
    aoo(array of\nobjects)
  end
  html{{HTML\nTABLE}}
  file --> |`readFile`\n\n| wb
  wb --> |`sheet_to_json`\n\n| aoo
  aoo --> |app.js\nfrontend code| html
ESBuild Config
Plugins can be referenced in the plugins array of the build config object:
import * as esbuild from 'esbuild'
// highlight-next-line
let sheetjsPlugin = {
  name: 'sheetjs',
  setup(build) {
    // ...
  }
};
await esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['app.js'],
  bundle: true,
  outfile: 'out.js',
  // highlight-next-line
  plugins: [sheetjsPlugin],
})
Registering File Extensions
The setup method receives the build options. Handlers for custom files should
be added using build.onLoad.
The first argument to onLoad is a configuration object. The filter property
is expected to be a regular expression. The following regular expression matches
NUMBERS, XLSX, XLS, and XLSB files:
    const EXTS = /.(numbers|xlsx|xls|xlsb)$/;
The second argument to onLoad is a callback that receives an arguments object.
The path property of the object is the absolute path to the file.
  setup(build) {
    build.onLoad({ filter: EXTS }, (args) => {
      const path = args.path;
      // ...
    });
  },
SheetJS Operations
The SheetJS readFile method2 will directly read the file on the filesystem.
The return value is a SheetJS workbook object3.
The loader in this demo will parse the workbook, pull the first worksheet, and
generate an array of row objects using the sheet_to_json method4.
:::caution pass
JSON does not natively support Dates! JSON.stringify will generate strings.
Through a clever workaround, it is possible to encode dates separately and recover the Date objects in the generated code module.
:::
import * as XLSX from 'xlsx';
import * as fs from 'fs';
XLSX.set_fs(fs);
/* plugin */
let sheetjsPlugin = {
  name: 'sheetjs',
  setup(build) {
    /* match NUMBERS, XLSX, XLS, and XLSB files */
    const EXTS = /.(numbers|xlsx|xls|xlsb)$/;
    /* this method will be called once for each referenced file */
    build.onLoad({ filter: EXTS }, (args) => {
      /* parse file from filesystem */
      const wb = XLSX.readFile(args.path);
      /* get first worksheet */
      const ws = wb.Sheets[wb.SheetNames[0]];
      /* workaround for JSON limitation */
      Date.prototype.toJSON2 = Date.prototype.toJSON;
      Date.prototype.toJSON = function() { return {d:this.toISOString()}; };
      /* generate row objects */
      const data = XLSX.utils.sheet_to_json(ws);
      /* generate final module code */
      const res = JSON.stringify(data);
      Date.prototype.toJSON = Date.prototype.toJSON2;
      const contents = `const data = ${res};
data.forEach(row => {
  Object.keys(row).forEach(k => {
    if(row[k]?.d) row[k] = new Date(row[k].d);
  })
});
export default data;`
      return { contents, loader: 'js' };
    });
  },
};
Asset Imports
Spreadsheets can be imported using the plugin.  Assuming pres.xlsx is stored
in the same folder as the script, ./pres.xlsx will be a data module:
import data from './pres.xlsx';
/* `data` is an array of objects from data/pres.xlsx */
const elt = document.createElement('div');
elt.innerHTML = "<table><tr><th>Name</th><th>Index</th></tr>" +
  data.map((row) => `<tr>
    <td>${row.Name}</td>
    <td>${row.Index}</td>
  </tr>`).join("") +
"</table>";
document.body.appendChild(elt);
Demo
:::note
This demo was last tested on 2023 October 21 against ESBuild 0.19.5
:::
Initial Setup
- Create a new skeleton project:
mkdir sheetjs-esb
cd sheetjs-esb
npm init -y
npm i --save esbuild@0.19.5
- Install the SheetJS NodeJS module:
{\ npm i --save https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-${current}/xlsx-${current}.tgz}
- Save the following to index.html:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>SheetJS + ESBuild</title>
  </head>
  <body>
   <script src="out.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>
- Save the following to app.js:
import data from './pres.numbers'
const elt = document.createElement('div');
elt.innerHTML = "<table><tr><th>Name</th><th>Index</th></tr>" +
  data.map((row) => `<tr>
    <td>${row.Name}</td>
    <td>${row.Index}</td>
  </tr>`).join("") +
"</table>";
document.body.appendChild(elt);
- Save the following to build.mjs:
import * as esbuild from 'esbuild'
import * as XLSX from 'xlsx';
import * as fs from 'fs';
XLSX.set_fs(fs);
let sheetjsPlugin = {
  name: 'sheetjs',
  setup(build) {
    /* match NUMBERS, XLSX, XLS, and XLSB files */
    const EXTS = /.(numbers|xlsx|xls|xlsb)$/;
    /* this method will be called once for each referenced file */
    build.onLoad({ filter: EXTS }, (args) => {
      /* parse file from filesystem */
      const wb = XLSX.readFile(args.path);
      /* get first worksheet */
      const ws = wb.Sheets[wb.SheetNames[0]];
      /* workaround for JSON limitation */
      Date.prototype.toJSON2 = Date.prototype.toJSON;
      Date.prototype.toJSON = function() { return {d:this.toISOString()}; };
      /* generate row objects */
      const data = XLSX.utils.sheet_to_json(ws);
      /* generate final module code */
      const res = JSON.stringify(data);
      Date.prototype.toJSON = Date.prototype.toJSON2;
      const contents = `const data = ${res};
data.forEach(row => {
  Object.keys(row).forEach(k => {
    if(row[k]?.d) row[k] = new Date(row[k].d);
  })
});
export default data;`
      return { contents, loader: 'js' };
    });
  },
};
await esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['app.js'],
  bundle: true,
  outfile: 'out.js',
  plugins: [sheetjsPlugin],
});
- Download https://sheetjs.com/pres.numbers and save to the project folder:
curl -LO https://sheetjs.com/pres.numbers
Static Site Test
- Build the site:
node build.mjs
The final script will be saved to out.js
- Start a local web server to host the project folder:
npx http-server .
The command will print a list of URLs.
- Open one of the URLs printed in the previous step (http://localhost:8080) and confirm that the same data is displayed.
To verify that the data was added to the page, append out.js to the URL
(http://localhost:8080/out.js) and view the source.  The source will include
president names.  It will not include SheetJS library references!
In the last test, the generated source looked like the following snippet
(() => {
  // pres.numbers
  var data = [{ "Name": "Bill Clinton", "Index": 42 }, /* ... more data */];
  data.forEach((row) => {
    Object.keys(row).forEach((k) => {
      if (row[k]?.d)
        row[k] = new Date(row[k].d);
    });
  });
  var pres_default = data;
  // app.js
  var elt = document.createElement("div");
  elt.innerHTML = "<table><tr><th>Name</th><th>Index</th></tr>" + pres_default.map((row) => `<tr>
    <td>${row.Name}</td>
    <td>${row.Index}</td>
  </tr>`).join("") + "</table>";
  document.body.appendChild(elt);
})();
- 
See "Workbook Object" ↩︎