rails how to export data to excel

You can use FasterCSV gem.

You can either use to_csv method.

def index @records = .... respond_to do |format| format.html # index.html.erb format.xml { render :xml => @records } format.csv { @records.to_csv } end end 

or customize the output and use send_data method in the controller.

format.csv do csv_string = FasterCSV.generate do |csv| # header row csv << ["id", "Column1", "Column1"] # data rows @records.each do |r| csv << [r.id, r.column1, r.column2] end # send it to the browser send_data csv_string, :type => 'text/csv; charset=iso-8859-1; header=present', :disposition => "attachment; filename=records.csv" end 

I would advice to use Spreadsheet which is mature. I'm using it with Rails 3 with no problems.

The overall process would be:

book = Spreadsheet::Workbook.new sheet = book.create_worksheet :name => 'Customers' sheet.row(0).concat %w{Name Country Acknowlegement} book.write '/path/to/output/excel-file.xls' 

Ruby 1.9 has a built in CSV library with very similar API as the FasterCSV gem (actually the gem got integrated into Ruby!).