Add a Spread Sheet to your Site

[Andy]

This open-source script allows you to have a web-based spread sheet on your site. It doesn't store files to your server so all you need is php to run it. But people can still save and load spread-sheets via cut and paste to/from their own computer.

I did a mod to the script to allow people to see various spreadsheets that may be hosted on my server. Then they can add their changes and email me the new version. The idea here is to provide a feedback mechanism for my software beta testers without them needing office software installed on their computer. and it removes the problem of file compatibility between the various spread-sheet formats since the cut and paste data is pure text.

I got it from here: http://www.simple-groupware.de/cms/Spreadsheet/Home

Installation is so simple, all you do is upload the files and set the cache directory permissions to 777 to allow the cache files to be written.

My installation is here where you can see the standard cool demo featuring charts: http://www.sitesugu.com/beta-testers/log/spreadsheet.php

Here is my custom version of the script in action with parameters to specify the chart:

http://www.sitesugu.com/beta-testers/log/spreadsheet.php?chart=sitesugu

Anyone can edit these spreadsheets and copy and paste data since it uses javascript. But you can't save to my server.

The online manual is here:
http://www.simple-groupware.de/cms/Spreadsheet/Manual

One stumbling block for me was how to format cells. The trick is to realise that after clicking on a cell, the formula edit box turns white. Here is where you enter text, html and formulas. But next to it is another edit box where you enter css code to format the cell. The css is covered in the manual.

To create links that load your own spreadsheets from a server, try my code. Insert this in the spreadsheet.php file at the start. make the code before the html tag look like this:

Code:

$lang = "en";
if (!empty($_REQUEST["lang"])) $lang = $_REQUEST["lang"];

$init_file = "examples/features_en.js";

if (!empty($_REQUEST["chart"])) {
  switch ($_REQUEST["chart"]) {
      case "sitesugu":
        $init_file = "latest/sitesugu.js";
      break;
      case "suguserver":
        $init_file = "latest/suguserver.js";
      break;
  }
}

if ($lang == "de") $init_file = "examples/features_de.js";
?>

Replace the .js file paths with ones to charts that you saved to your server.

Then append ?chart=yourchartname to the end of the url to get the script to load your saved spreadsheet.