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# Roadmap

Most scenarios involving spreadsheets and data can be divided into 5 parts:

1) **Acquire Data**:  Data may be stored anywhere: local or remote files,
   databases, HTML TABLE, or even generated programmatically in the web browser.

2) **Extract Data**:  For spreadsheet files, this involves parsing raw bytes to
   read the cell data. For general JS data, this involves reshaping the data.

3) **Process Data**:  From generating summary statistics to cleaning data
   records, this step is the heart of the problem.

4) **Package Data**:  This can involve making a new spreadsheet or serializing
   with `JSON.stringify` or writing XML or simply flattening data for UI tools.

5) **Release Data**:  Spreadsheet files can be uploaded to a server or written
   locally.  Data can be presented to users in an HTML TABLE or data grid.

A common problem involves generating a valid spreadsheet export from data stored
in an HTML table.  In this example, an HTML TABLE on the page will be scraped,
a row will be added to the bottom with the date of the report, and a new file
will be generated and downloaded locally. `XLSX.writeFile` takes care of
packaging the data and attempting a local download:

```js
// Acquire Data (reference to the HTML table)
var table_elt = document.getElementById("my-table-id");

// Extract Data (create a workbook object from the table)
var workbook = XLSX.utils.table_to_book(table_elt);

// Process Data (add a new row)
var ws = workbook.Sheets["Sheet1"];
XLSX.utils.sheet_add_aoa(ws, [["Created "+new Date().toISOString()]], {origin:-1});

// Package and Release Data (`writeFile` tries to write and save an XLSB file)
XLSX.writeFile(workbook, "Report.xlsb");
```

This library tries to simplify steps 2 and 4 with functions to extract useful
data from spreadsheet files (`read` / `readFile`) and generate new spreadsheet
files from data (`write` / `writeFile`).  Additional utility functions like
`table_to_book` work with other common data sources like HTML tables.

This documentation and various demo projects cover a number of common scenarios
and approaches for steps 1 and 5.

Utility functions help with step 3.

## Highlights

["Data Import"](../solutions/input) describes solutions for common data import
scenarios.

["Data Export"](../solutions/output) describes solutions for common data export
scenarios.

["Data Processing"](../solutions/processing) describes solutions for common
workbook processing and manipulation scenarios.

["Utility Functions"](../api/utilities) details utility functions for
translating JSON Arrays and other common JS structures into worksheet objects.