Soroban

Soroban is a calculating engine that understands Excel formulas.

Getting Started

Apart from the examples on this page, look at the tests and the API docs to get up to speed.

Example Usage

s = Soroban::Sheet.new()

s.A1 = 2
s.set('B1:B5' => [1,2,3,4,5])
s.C1 = "=SUM(A1, B1:B5, 5) + A1 ^ 3"
s.C2 = "=IF(C1>30,'Large','Tiny')"

puts s.C1             # => 30

s.bind(:input => :A1, :output => :C2)

puts s.output         # => "Tiny"

s.input = 3

puts s.output         # => "Large"
puts s.C1             # => 50

Bindings

Soroban allows you to bind meaningful variable names to individual cells and to ranges of cells. When bound to a range, variables act as an array.

s.set(:A1 => 'hello', 'B1:B5' => [1,2,3,4,5])

s.bind(:foo => :A1, :bar => 'B1:B5')

puts s.foo            # => 'hello'
puts s.bar[0]         # => 1

s.bar[0] = 'howdy'

puts s.B1             # => 'howdy'

Persistence

Soroban formulas are strings that begin with the = symbol. It is therefore easy to persist them, which is mighty handy if you need to parse an Excel spreadsheet, rip out formulas, store everything to a database and then perform calculations based on user input.