2017-05-09 18:07:57 +00:00
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## Philosophy
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<details>
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<summary><b>Philosophy</b> (click to show)</summary>
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Prior to SheetJS, APIs for processing spreadsheet files were format-specific.
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Third-party libraries either supported one format, or they involved a separate
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set of classes for each supported file type. Even though XLSB was introduced in
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Excel 2007, nothing outside of SheetJS or Excel supported the format.
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To promote a format-agnostic view, js-xlsx starts from a pure-JS representation
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that we call the ["Common Spreadsheet Format"](#common-spreadsheet-format).
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2017-08-01 05:50:53 +00:00
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Emphasizing a uniform object representation enables new features like format
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2017-05-09 18:07:57 +00:00
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conversion (e.g. reading an XLSX template and saving as XLS) and circumvents the
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"class trap". By abstracting the complexities of the various formats, tools
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need not worry about the specific file type!
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A simple object representation combined with careful coding practices enables
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use cases in older browsers and in alternative environments like ExtendScript
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and Web Workers. It is always tempting to use the latest and greatest features,
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but they tend to require the latest versions of browsers, limiting usability.
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Utility functions capture common use cases like generating JS objects or HTML.
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Most simple operations should only require a few lines of code. More complex
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operations generally should be straightforward to implement.
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Excel pushes the XLSX format as default starting in Excel 2007. However, there
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are other formats with more appealing properties. For example, the XLSB format
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is spiritually similar to XLSX but files often tend up taking less than half the
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space and open much faster! Even though an XLSX writer is available, other
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format writers are available so users can take advantage of the unique
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characteristics of each format.
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</details>
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