Xlwings Lite – Python in Excel Using Pyodide

lite.xlwings.org

22 points·owenm··5 comments

This is a really exciting development. Can anyone currently using this chime in on working with pyodide/dependency management in this setting?

I imagine that this reduces the iteration time for developing excel integrations. It's unfortunate that direct db queries aren't supported, but I guess that's a wasm/pyodide issue.

I am not a random user, but the creator. The dependencies are managed via standard requirements.txt file, which is stored in the Excel workbook itself. When you open xlwings Lite with the workbook, the dependencies are installed from either PyPI or Pyodide's own repository (after the first download from the browser's cache).

Direct db queries are indeed a restriction of Wasm/Pyodide, but there are more and more databases offering a HTTP layer. For example, Supabase has this built-in via PostgREST. For Oracle, there is Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS). Ultimately, you can also build your own little proxy server, although that's a little bit more work, but might still be worth it for company-internal use.

I have a couple use cases in mind and am excited to give it a whirl. Thanks for creating this!

Does it work with any opensource Excel alternative?

No, this is for Excel only, but it does work with the free online version of Excel. I think LibreOffice has support for Python via PyOO.

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