XLParser: A C# parser for Microsoft Excel formulas

Re:XLParser: A C# parser for Microsoft Excel formulas by cm2187 on Sunday September 27, 2015 @07:00AM (#10286143)

One feature that would be cool is an Excel addin to which you would designate a bunch of cells from a spreadsheet as inputs and one output, would follow the logic and emit code to replicate this logic as a function.

Code in VBA would be an obvious candidate, allowing non technical users to apply a complex Excel based logic to a whole list of entries for instance, by making a function that can be called on every line. Or allowing to hide the logic in a password protected VBA project so that the spreadsheet can be shared without disclosing the logic.

Could also be used by IT departments when they inherit from spreadsheets they need to integrate in systems. In fact it could even be used as a UI. Business users express the business logic in excel, a syntax they are familiar with, and update the logic in a system automatically by the system parsing the spreadsheet.

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Re:XLParser: A C# parser for Microsoft Excel formulas by masklinn on Sunday September 27, 2015 @07:35AM (#10286200)

> One feature that would be cool is an Excel addin to which you would designate a bunch of cells from a spreadsheet as inputs and one output, would follow the logic and emit code to replicate this logic as a function.

From having "you suck at excel" run in the background a few weeks back, I learned that feature is already in excel, there are "input", "calculation" and "output" cell formats/styles: https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c?t=2756

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Re:XLParser: A C# parser for Microsoft Excel formulas by arethuza on Sunday September 27, 2015 @08:28AM (#10286292)

That's almost exactly what Excel Services in SharePoint does - and you don't want to use SharePoint you can use libraries like Aspose.Cells to "run" spreadsheets inside applications.

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