# Importing data for excel file or csv file **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [December 7, 2005, 11:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-data-for-excel-file-or-csv-file/49666 "2005-12-07T11:03:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/brutyn_nick)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 11:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-data-for-excel-file-or-csv-file/49666/1 "2005-12-07T11:03:42Z")
hey, i have this website (with ajax also) with lot of records of employee, and as an extra feature i want that the customer can import his employeelist (perhaps 100+ records), lot of work to do this manually. i would create a template like this Firstname Lastname Phone xxxx xxxxx xxxxx yyyy yyyyy yyyyy then they upload the excel file or save it as csv file (with spacing characters), i read the file and loop through it, and save the records in the database. does anyone has any experience with this??? thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/brutyn_nick)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 1:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-data-for-excel-file-or-csv-file/49666/2 "2005-12-07T13:38:52Z")
Brutyn N. wrote: > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) My advice is to look at FasterCSV - I’ve just done/am refactoring something very similar right now - it’s very few lines of code (and sorry I cannot provide them) Kev ---
**Author:** ![brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/brutyn_nick)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 2:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-data-for-excel-file-or-csv-file/49666/3 "2005-12-07T14:23:51Z")
hey, thanks for that, is there any doc for FasterCSV , cuz i download the zip and no docs in there :s i just need to read csv file, ead lines, and insert into database, thats all thx ---
**Author:** ![brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/brutyn_nick)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 5:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-data-for-excel-file-or-csv-file/49666/4 "2005-12-07T17:43:53Z")
Hey, I am still working on this importing stuff. This all works till now. I have clients, here i keep for each client the country info. Like this: \<%= country\_options\_for\_select(selected = @client.country, priority\_countries = ['Belgium', 'Netherlands'] ) %\> But now also for the importing with csv, how must i slove this problem? In the database is save the id of the countries, but the use will probably fill in the excel/csv file the name (what is normal). Any ideas?? Also check for other problem (parsing validation to strings) [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.ruby.rails/33460](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.ruby.rails/33460) Thanks in advance Nick ---
**Author:** ![brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@brutyn\_nick](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/brutyn_nick)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-data-for-excel-file-or-csv-file/49666/5 "2005-12-08T04:33:44Z")
Brutyn N. wrote: > hey, > > thanks for that, > is there any doc for FasterCSV , cuz i download the zip and no docs in there :s There’s a Readme, which tells you “See FasterCSV for documentation.” In other words, the documentation is RDoc documentation for the FasterCSV class, which you will find in the file faster\_csv.rb And there are the tests… regards Justin