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Ruled

Introduction

Ruled is a spreadsheet editor you put in your own web app. It opens the Excel files people already have (.xlsx, .xlsm and CSV), lets them work in them as they would in Excel, and hands the workbook back to your app as an .xlsx file and as values in the shape you asked for.

What sets it apart is that it can know what a workbook is meant to hold. You describe the workbooks you expect in a schema: the sheets, the tables, each field’s type and limits, and the rules across them. A workbook that matches is checked as people type, cell by cell, and your own code runs alongside: checks that call your services, and business logic that fills cells in from them.

What it’s for

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  • Collecting data in spreadsheets: suppliers sending price lists, teams returning budgets and forecasts, anyone filling in a template. People keep using a spreadsheet; you get values you can trust, checked before they reach you.
  • Reviewing and correcting files inside your app instead of emailing them back and forth.
  • Editing workbooks in the browser that must go back to Excel unchanged in everything nobody touched.

How it works

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The editor is a React component, and a <workbook-editor> element for every other kind of page. The workbook itself lives in a web worker: reading the file, calculating formulas and writing it back happen off the page’s main thread, so the page stays responsive with large workbooks.

your app ──open(bytes)──▶ editor ──▶ worker: reads the .xlsx, calculates, checks
            ◀──onSave(file)── editor ◀── worker: writes the .xlsx back

When the workbook is saved, your app receives:

  • the .xlsx file, with everything the editor doesn’t show kept as it was;
  • the values in your schema’s shape: each table’s records by field, each named cell;
  • each changed cell, with its value before and after, and who did what, when.

What’s in it

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  • Formulas, calculated live by the editor’s own engine, including dynamic arrays and LAMBDA.
  • Charts and pivot tables, drawn from the current cells and editable as in Excel.
  • Formatting, sorting, filters, data validation, names, hyperlinks, notes and comments.
  • Schemas with declarative checks, async hooks, business logic and a visual designer.
  • Theming through design tokens, languages (English and German built in), keyboard use and screen reader support.

Next

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