odsexport 0.0.4

Python-native ODS writer library

odsexport

odsexport is a Python-native library to create ODS (Open Document Spreadsheet) documents. In other words, it lets you script creating "Excel" sheets from within Python. The focus is on providing a feature-rich document creation abstraction: all kinds of cell formatting options (data and style formatting, including datetimes) are supported, column and row formatting is supported (width/height/visibility), conditional formatting, and auto filtering is implemented as well. odsexport is intended to make it easy to use ODS documents as a data sink while creating documents that are mutable (i.e., recalculate their cells according to formulas). An example of what documents it can produce is given in the example directory along with the source code that produced it.

Cell formatting

When handing cells or cell ranges from odsexport, there are three format characters that are understood:

• a: Create an absolute reference, i.e., include the sheet name. Needs to be used when referencing cells between different sheets.
• c: Pin the column. I.e., instead of G4, it will produce $G4.
• r: Pin the row. I.e., instead of G4, it will produce G$4.

All of these can be combined, here is an example of a sheet "Sheet" with cell G4:

• a: Sheet.G4
• c: $G4
• r: G$4
• cr: $G$4
• acr: Sheet.$G$4

Rant

Personally, I hate Excel or LibreOffice with a burning passion. That such an ugly, stinking turd of software is used by millions of people around the globe already seems odd. It is pretty much guaranteed that somewhere the salaries of people depend on this utterly shitty, piss-poor quality application. Worse yet, possibly some engineer is making structural computations using Excel, where lives may depend on the accuracy of the results. The thought alone makes me want to cry out in pain. Software so stupid, broken and obnoxious that computations may not only not work on the exact same software with a different locale setting, nooooo, even worse: it may silently ignore the locale errors and produce wrong results. Don't believe me? Try counting values using COUNTIF() with a condition that counts values greater than/less than a fractional value and observe what happens when the locale setting (e.g., 4.1 vs. 4,1) is different than the number you enter. It really is that dumb. Oh, or have you looked at the SUBTOTAL function? You know, that function that computes different things depending on a given function index as a parameter? Like, if you want a SUM, that's function 9 but if you want the maximum value that's obviously 4. Who ever thought this train wreck of spreadsheeting was even remotely acceptable?

Excel/LibreOffice Calc is an utter disgrace. And yet, just like thousands of people before me, I need to cope with it. To me, that compromise is having actual good data quality in a safe haven and only exporting to Excel when needed.

License

GNU GPL-3.