Spreadsheet widgets in Elementi 2015
From SpinetiX Support Wiki
This page is about the spreadsheet data-driven widgets included into Elementi 2015. For other versions, see Spreadsheet widgets page.
Contents
Introduction
Spreadsheets are commonly used to store data in tabular form (i.e data cells arranged into rows and columns), like sport scores, employee birthdays, production results, price lists, poll results, restaurant menus, etc. The spreadsheet widgets can be used to display the content of such files within digital signage projects.
A CSV spreadsheet file is a delimited text file that uses a comma (though other separators can be used as well) to separate values. Almost all spreadsheets and database management systems can natively export data as CSV file - some examples include: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, OpenOffice.org Calc, LibreOffice Calc, Numbers (spreadsheet) etc.
Note:Video tutorial
Spreadsheet widgets
Under the "Spreadsheets" folder of Elementi 2015 Library, you can find five ready-to-use widgets that automatically display data extracted from a CSV spreadsheet data source:
- Text Bar
- Displays text content using a fixed number of lines and applying a bottom-to-top & line-by-line scrolling effect whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.
- Text Ticker
- Displays text content using a continuous horizontal scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.
- Text Roll
- Displays text content using a continuous vertical scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the selected number of lines to fit into the predefined area.
- Slideshow
- Displays slides composed of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the CSV spreadsheet. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.
- Table
- Displays slides composed of multiple cells of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the CSV spreadsheet. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.
Configuration
Each of the widgets above can be customized using the options provided under "Properties" tab - for more details go to the dedicated page of each widget type, linked above.
To edit the properties related to the data source, click on the 
button. This opens the Data Feed Properties dialog, which allows changing the URI from where the data are retrieved, the refresh rate, and the optional limit of items.
Note:CSV parser
A spreadsheet file can be parsed into a table-like format, with columns and rows, using the CSV parser. Once selected, the "CSV Parser" tab is added within the "Data Feed Properties" dialog, offering the following parameters:
- Separator
- Select the column separator used within the CSV data, from the following: comma (,), semicolon (;), pipe (|) and tab.
- CSV fields are not quoted
- Enable this when the data fields inside the CSV file are not quoted. When not checked, automatic quote detection is done.
- Specify column headers
- Enable this when the spreadsheet file does not have column headers (i.e. the first row contains the name of the column), and enter the column names in the table below.
Note:Advanced configuration
For Elementi X users, the "Data Feed Properties" dialog offers advanced options for more complex data processing.
$.parseCSV() and parseCSV2() functions.