Hi!
My company is needing to develop a software where we can dynamically design “Excel forms” (we already design dynamic web forms) and then use them to get input data from user entry and formula results.
So far, your Cell component is the best alternative I’ve seen. I have a lot of flexibility I will need to use to desing my forms correctly. However, we do have a problem with the files continually making postback requests to the server, as the Excel files are probably going to be quite large.
Do you have any way to make formula calculations client-side. Or perhaps some sort of AJAX functionality? Or any plans to implement this in the future?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Andres F Pabon
Dear Andres,
Thank you for considering Aspose.
Aspose.Cells is a non-UI component which can only run on server side.
For your case, I think Aspose.Grid more suits your need. It includes an Excel-like web control and an Excel-like desktop control. In Aspose.Grid.Web, it can only post back modified data.
You can check the demos at GitHub - aspose-cells/Aspose.Cells-for-.NET: Aspose.Cells for .NET examples, plugins and showcases
Oops. Sorry, I got confused.
Aspose.Grid was the component I tried, not Aspose.Cells. So far I’ve been able to do everything we need, except preventing a postback event every time the user needs to recalculate his formulas…
Do you have any plans to make this UI component make it’s formual recalculations client-side? I already tried the official OWC by Microsoft, and the component makes it’s own calculations client-side (but excludes a lot of nice features you do have).
Thanks!
Andres.
Hi Andres,
I have to talk this feature with Aspose.Grid developers. We will reply you back in a few days.
Hi Andres,
First, I am not very clear about the problems you have encountered. What files continually make postback requests to the server, and going to be quite large? Please tell us more details.
We have not any plans about implementing the formula engine at client-side so far. We think that it's too complicated. Because the client side can't store all the workbook data that may be needed in calculation, it must be hybrid architecture(server-side and client-side).
We have added a new feature, the SmartNavigation in the GridWeb. It uses a background postback technology. It enables the control postback its data to server at background, without requiring refreshing the whole page. It provides more smooth visual effect and better performance. The new release will be available within one or two weeks.
And we are also researching the AJAX technology. But there are no definite plans about integrating this technology into our product. We think that this technology maybe not mature enough.
Thank you.
Hi Henry,
Thanks for your quick response. The new SmartNavigation feature sounds really nice. We’re planning on implementing Excel files with file sizes around 80-100 Kb each, but those are to be used on an intranet, so that size is probably not a big issue provided the users won’t refresh the formulas every time they change a single field.
However, if the SMartNavigation feature doesn’t need to resend the whole file, it would be a lot nicer (I don’t yet understand how it works, although my guess is it resends the whole file while saving the postback of all the other elements in thw web form, as an AJAX implementation does).
I’ve also had a problem recalculating formulas after I insert a row (the formulas are left unchanged, thus the references are lost), so for now I’ve written a special class to manipulate all formulas in the Aspose.Grid object. Do you have a solution for that issue planned?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Andres
Hi,
When using the SmartNavigation feature, the user still need to click a button to submit his input, then see the calculation result.
We know the formula issue you mentioned. We are evaluating some solutions. And we will fix it within 2 month.
Thank you.