Node.js Express Project to Export Raw JSON to Excel (.XLSX) File Using json2xls Library Using Javascript

Welcome folks today in this blog post we will be exporting raw json to excel file using json2xls library in browser using javascript. All the full source code of the application is shown below.

Get Started

In order to get started you need to make a new node.js project using the below commands as shown below

npm init -y

npm i express

npm i json2xls

And after that you will see the directory structure of the node.js express app as shown below

And now you need to make the index.js file which will be the starting point of the application as shown below

index.js

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const json2xls = require('json2xls');
const bodyparser = require('body-parser')
app.use(bodyparser.json())
app.use(bodyparser.urlencoded({extended:false}))

app.use(json2xls.middleware);

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server started on port 3000');
});

const express = require('express');

const app = express();

const json2xls = require('json2xls');

const bodyparser = require('body-parser')

app.use(bodyparser.json())

app.use(bodyparser.urlencoded({extended:false}))

app.use(json2xls.middleware);

app.listen(3000, () => {

console.log('Server started on port 3000');

});

As you can see we are importing the express and json2xls libraries at the very top and starting a very basic express app at port number 3000. And also we are applying the middleware of bodyparser and json2xls to the express app.

app.get('/',(req,res) => {
    res.sendFile(__dirname + "/index.html")
})

app.get('/',(req,res) => {

res.sendFile(__dirname + "/index.html")

})

As you can see we have a simple get route for the express app in which we are loading the index.html file when we open the / route of the express app. Now we need to make the index.html template which will contain the simple html5 form where we allow the user to enter the raw json and a simple button to submit the form.

index.html

<form action="/download" method="post">
    <textarea type="text" name="json" cols="30" rows="5" placeholder="Enter JSON here" required></textarea>
    <br>
    <button type="submit">Download Excel</button>
</form>

<br>

<button type="submit">Download Excel</button>

</form>

Now we need to write the /download post request where we get the json data submitted by the user and then we use the json2xls library to export the raw json to excel and download it inside the browser as an attachment.

app.post('/download', (req, res) => {
  let data = req.body.json
  console.log(data)

  res.xls('data.xlsx', JSON.parse(data));
});

app.post('/download', (req, res) => {

let data = req.body.json

console.log(data)

res.xls('data.xlsx', JSON.parse(data));

});

As you can see in the above post request we are firstly of parsing the json using JSON.parse() method and then passing that to the res.xls() to download the output as an data.xlsx file as attachment in the browser.

FULL SOURCE CODE