mael

Tool to convert markdown list to Excel, mael.

Motivation

Do you use Excel for summarizing some lists as tables? Isn't it difficult to manage Excel in git? The common repositories show differences in text files between versions but not in Excel files. How can we manage spreadsheet tables with versions? CSV is one of the choices but is it really easy? What if we can manage table data as markdown file?

This tool can convert markdown files to tables in an Excel file.

Installation

This tool is installed with pip:

$ pip install mael

Usage

1. Initialize the directory, then initial files are created based on the templates.

   $ mael init some_dir

2. Write your data in markdown. You can put multiple markdown files in the directory.

   # List title
   
   ## Summary
   
   Please write summary of the table data.
   
   ## List
   
   ### Column 1
   
   Value 1-1
   
   ### Column 2
   
   Value 1-2
   
   ---
   
   ### Column 1
   
   Value 2-1
   
   ---
   
   ### Column 2
   
   Value 3-2

   Separate each item with ---.

3. Build Excel, then you can get an Excel file in the directory.

   $ mael build some_dir

   There, the Excel file contains the sheet as:

   Summary

   Please write summary of the table data.

   Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
   Value 1-1	Value 2-1
   Value 2-1		Value 3-2

   If you put multiple markdown files, the Excel file contains multiple sheets.

Attention

Please write all the files in UTF-8 encoding.

Advanced use

You can use variables. Also, you can define environmental variables for each environment.

1. Define variables in some_dir/config/variables.ini:

   VARIABLE_1=ABCDEFG
   VARIABLE_2=HIJKLMN

2. Use the variables in markdown files. Surround the variable name with {{ and }}:

   # List title
   
   ## Summary
   
   Variable 1 is {{ VARIABLE_1 }}.
   Variable 2 is {{ VARIABLE_2 }}.
   
   ......

   Of course, you can use the variables not only in the summary but also in the list.

3. Build Excel, then you can get an Excel file in the directory.

   $ mael build some_dir

   There, the Excel file contains the sheet as:

   Summary

   variable 1 is ABCDEFG.

   variable 2 is HIJKLMN.

   ......

To use environmental variables, define the variables in some_dir/config/variables.${env_name}.ini, such as some_dir/config/variables.dev.ini. Environmental variable file overwrite the varabiles defined in the normal variable file, variable.ini. To build the environmental file, execute mael build some_dir -e dev, and you will get the Excel file, some_dir_dev.xlsx.

PyPI package

https://pypi.org/project/mael/