Canvas Datagrid

Canvas Datagrid is a high-performance grid with a straightforward API.

Click here for a live standalone integration demo.

Tested Deployments

This demo was last verified on 2024 April 25.

Live Demo

Due to CSS conflicts between the data grid and the documentation generator, features like scrolling may not work as expected.

The linked demo uses a simple HTML page.

function SheetJSCDG() {
  const [url, setUrl] = React.useState("https://docs.sheetjs.com/pres.numbers");
  const [done, setDone] = React.useState(false);
  const ref = React.useRef(); // ref to DIV container
  const set_url = (evt) => setUrl(evt.target.value);
  const [cdg, setCdg] = React.useState(null); // reference to grid object

  return ( <>
    <div height={300} width={300} ref={ref}/>
    {!done && ( <>
      <b>URL: </b><input type="text" value={url} onChange={set_url} size="50"/>
      <br/><button onClick={async() => {
        /* fetch and parse workbook */
        const wb = XLSX.read(await (await fetch(url)).arrayBuffer());
        const ws = wb.Sheets[wb.SheetNames[0]];
        const data = XLSX.utils.sheet_to_json(ws, { header:1 });

        /* set up grid and load data */
        if(!cdg) setCdg(canvasDatagrid({ parentNode: ref.current, data }));
        else cdg.data = data;
        setDone(true);
      }}><b>Fetch!</b></button>
    </> )}
  </> );
}

Integration Details

Obtaining the Library

The canvas-datagrid NodeJS packages include a minified script that can be directly inserted as a script tag. The unpkg CDN also serves this script:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/canvas-datagrid/dist/canvas-datagrid.js"></script>

Previewing Data

The HTML document needs a container element:

<div id="gridctr"></div>

Grid initialization is a one-liner:

var grid = canvasDatagrid({
  parentNode: document.getElementById('gridctr'),
  data: []
});

For large data sets, it's necessary to constrain the size of the grid.

grid.style.height = '100%';
grid.style.width = '100%';

Once the workbook is read and the worksheet is selected, assigning the data variable automatically updates the view:

grid.data = XLSX.utils.sheet_to_json(ws, {header:1});

This demo previews the first worksheet.

Editing

canvas-datagrid handles the entire edit cycle. No intervention is necessary.

Saving Data

grid.data is immediately readable and can be converted back to a worksheet. Some versions return an array-like object without the length, so a little bit of preparation may be needed:

/* converts an array of array-like objects into an array of arrays */
function prep(arr) {
  var out = [];
  for(var i = 0; i < arr.length; ++i) {
    if(!arr[i]) continue;
    if(Array.isArray(arr[i])) { out[i] = arr[i]; continue };
    var o = new Array();
    Object.keys(arr[i]).forEach(function(k) { o[+k] = arr[i][k] });
    out[i] = o;
  }
  return out;
}

/* build worksheet from the grid data */
var ws = XLSX.utils.aoa_to_sheet(prep(grid.data));

/* build up workbook */
var wb = XLSX.utils.book_new();
XLSX.utils.book_append_sheet(wb, ws, 'SheetJS');

/* generate download */
XLSX.writeFile(wb, "SheetJS.xlsx");

Additional Features

This demo barely scratches the surface. The underlying grid component includes many additional features that work with SheetJS Pro.