Export to Excel in Rails 3 without a Gem
Creating Demo project
rails new xcel_demo –d mysql
Creating a User model
rails g scaffold User name:string email:string content:string
Add a MIME type in \config\initializers\mime_type.rb
Mime::Type.register 'application/vnd.ms-excel', :xls
Add a xls format output to the method in the Controller
def index
@users = User.all
respond_to do |format|
format.html # index.html.erb
format.xls
format.xml { render :xml => @users }
end
end
Creating the view for the XLS
Now create a view to render the xls file. Here as we have modified the index method we will create a view index.xls.erb for the same in the views for Users
<h1>Listing users</h1>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>City</th>
<th>Gender</th>
<th>Phone</th>
<th>Address</th>
<th></th>
<th></th>
<th></th>
</tr>
<% @users.each do |user| %>
<tr>
<td><%= user.name %></td>
<td><%= user.city %></td>
<td><%= user.gender %></td>
<td><%= user.phone %></td>
<td><%= user.address %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
</table>
<br />
The text in the <th> tags are the headers and <td> tags are the data for the specified columns
Adding the link to export excel on the Index page
<%= link_to 'Export XLS', url_for(:format => 'xls') %>
This will allow the data on index page to be exported in Excel Format.
