Re: Use babel to import table data from OpenDocument spreadsheets?

[James Harkins <jamshark70@gmail.com>]

At Fri, 19 Jul 2013 00:32:44 +0530,
Jambunathan K wrote:
> I don't want to venture in to Babel. 
> 
> I don't want to experiment with unoconv either.  I have a non-official
> libreoffice installed.  Pulling in official unoconv will interfere with
> my working installation.

Fair enough.

> For your purposes, just soffice will do.

Except that I tried using soffice --headless, but I could never get it to write any output file.

> (defun org-table-import-ods (&optional file-name)
>   (interactive "fFile: ")
>   (let ((csv-file (org-odt-convert file-name "csv"))
> 	(pos (point)))
>     (save-excursion
>       (insert (with-temp-buffer
> 		(insert-file-contents csv-file)
> 		(org-table-convert-region (point-min) (point-max) '(4))
> 		(buffer-string))))))

Wow, thanks, this is great! I never would have guessed the stuff about with-temp-buffer.

This snippet didn't handle the part about deleting the old table contents, but I was actually able to figure that out on my own (below).

And... using it in a src block as below... works! I don't see the change in table contents in the original org buffer, but the new contents definitely show up in the HTML export. That's all I need, and I'd agree that this behavior -- protecting the org file from side effects -- is safer.

Next, parameterize the file name and table name.

So this is really pretty f'''... sweet. I'm thrilled! Thanks to Jambunathan for the crucial info that got me over the part I just couldn't figure out on my own.

hjh


#+name: gettable1
#+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports results
(defun org-table-import-ods (&optional file-name)
  (interactive "fFile: ")
  (let ((csv-path (concat (file-name-sans-extension file-name) ".csv"))
	(pos (point)))
    (shell-command (concat "unoconv -f csv -i 9,34,system,1,1/5/2/1/3/1/4/1 " file-name))
    (save-excursion
      (let ((table-begin
	     (funcall (lambda ()
			(search-forward "#+name: table1")
			(search-forward-regexp "^|")
			(beginning-of-line)
			(point))))
	    (table-end
	     (funcall (lambda ()
			(search-forward "# end table")
			(beginning-of-line)
			(point)))))
	(delete-region table-begin table-end)
	(goto-char table-begin)
	(insert (with-temp-buffer
		  (insert-file-contents csv-path)
		  (org-table-convert-region (point-min) (point-max) '(16))
		  (buffer-string)))
	(goto-char table-begin)
	(org-table-insert-hline)))))

(org-table-import-ods "html-table.ods")
#+end_src