Getting started

Rust_xlsxwriter is a library and doesn't need to be installed. All that is required is to add it the Cargo.toml file for your project. To demonstrate we will start with a small sample application.

Create a sample application

Create a new rust command-line application as follows:

cargo new hello-xlsx

This will create a directory like the following:

hello-xlsx/
├── Cargo.toml
└── src
    └── main.rs

Edit the Cargo.toml file and add the following rust_xlsxwriter dependency so the file looks like below. Note, rust_xlsxwriter adds new features regularly do make sure you use the latest version.

[package]
name = "hello-xlsx"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

[dependencies]
rust_xlsxwriter = "0.26.0"

Modify the main.rs file so it looks like this:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR Apache-2.0
//
// Copyright 2022-2023, John McNamara, jmcnamara@cpan.org

//! Create a simple Hello World style Excel spreadsheet using the
//! rust_xlsxwriter library.

use rust_xlsxwriter::{Workbook, XlsxError};

fn main() -> Result<(), XlsxError> {
    // Create a new Excel file object.
    let mut workbook = Workbook::new();

    // Add a worksheet to the workbook.
    let worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet();

    // Write a string to cell (0, 0) = A1.
    worksheet.write_string(0, 0, "Hello")?;

    // Write a number to cell (1, 0) = A2.
    worksheet.write_number(1, 0, 12345)?;

    // Save the file to disk.
    workbook.save("hello.xlsx")?;

    Ok(())
}

The run the application as follows:

cargo run

This will create an output file called hello.xlsx which should look something like this: