Pretty simple. I like the formatting features. It is very easy to switch a format style after defining a particular format object. One of the design decisions that can be argued is how to actually write the data. An alternate approach is to write the headers one at a time, and as each header is written, iterate through the objects that we wish to write. The described method is inefficient because it ignores how Ruby stores its arrays, row-major order.

An alternate approach to calling the write method is to pass an array.  Unfortunately, when objects are returned by using the find method, the fields do not return in a specific order so there is no guarantee the headers we wrote at the top of the spreadsheet will be in the same order as the objects that were returned. I deployed a version of this with Ruby Rails.

In my own experience, my new function had surpassed my old Win32 based function in both speed and portability thanks to spreadsheet. I recommend using this method even if your project is slated for a windows box with office installed.  Unless you need formulas, then you are out of luck

The example is almost finished. I encapsulated the above function in a method. You can decide where to implement it, either in one of the helper controllers or in the current controller. In my implementation, a user navigates to the reports page, navigates some Ajax controls and submits, using a button that calls the function below, a desired report. The view for display_printout is left blank.