Monday, December 26, 2011

Create smashing mashups with Excel

Today's post is brought to you by Larry Waldman, a program manager on the Excel team. You may remember Larry from his previous posts on embedding Excel files on web sites and designing Excel solutions for the Web.


Hello, web developers! Today, I want to point you to ExcelMashup.com, a new site from the Excel team that is designed to help you get started creating spreadsheet-based mashups. To create an Excel mashup, you use Excel Web App to create an embedded workbook that is stored on SkyDrive, and then displayed in a host web page. Once you've embedded the workbook, you use the JavaScript API to programmatically interact with it. 


To get started, do the following three things:

Sign up for a free SkyDrive account, if you don't already have one.Upload your Excel file to SkyDrive.Grab the JavaScript embed code snippet and start coding!

We've created some example mashups to help you see what's possible, including a Daily Calories Calculator and a Destination Explorer.


In this example, you search for a specific food, choose a serving size, and then see dietary information appear inside cells in an embedded workbook. This interactivity is accomplished by using the JavaScript API. This example also shows how to use the calculation and charting features of Excel Web App to render a chart that compares daily calorie intake to recommended dietary guidelines.


 Daily Calories Calculator mashup


To learn how to recreate this example, click the text in the upper-right corner of the page. Then, to find sample code and instructions, click a specific area on the page, such as the search box or meal input worksheet. 


Sample code and instructions for recreating Meal Input worksheet


In this example, select a place to visit, and you'll see information about the area's average temperature and precipitation, along with monthly visitor patterns. (Fair warning: This information is intended only for illustrative purposes, so please don't rely on it for actual trip-planning activities!) You'll also see related information about your destination appear in Bing Maps.


Destination Explorer mashup 


To find out how to we created the Destination Explorer mashup, refer to this how-to guide.


We hope you're as excited as we are about interactive data mashups, and that you'll find ExcelMashup.com helpful as you create with your own. Feel free to ask questions in the Excel Web App forums or use the interactive code explorer, where you can experiment with our API right there on the site. Developers and JavaScript experts should feel right at home!


If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please let us know by leaving a comment here or on ExcelMashup.com.


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