SNsnthpy·Mar 3, 2023
I recently discovered xlOil after many years with xlWings and periodically checking for other options out there. xlOil is an order of magnitude faster than xlWings or VBA (benchmarks taken from here: https://github.com/lukedays/excel-benchmarks) while still being easy to use and the most feature complete!
With xlOil, you can easily write functions in Python and have them appear in Excel as worksheet functions and macros.
What sets xlOil apart is its ability to have very low overheads when calling your own worksheet functions. This means you can write complex functions without sacrificing performance. xlOil supports different languages via plugins, including C++, Python, and SQL.
With xlOil, you'll have access to a range of features that make writing Excel functions in Python a breeze. For instance, the Python syntax for declaring Excel fu
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nctions is incredibly concise, and you can use optional type checking of function parameters and support for keyword arguments. xlOil also offers tight integration with numpy, so you can enjoy very low overheads for array functions.
Another advantage of xlOil is its support for a range of data structures, including tuples, lists, dictionarys, and pandas dataframes. Additionally, you can use xlOil to write async functions, RTD functions, and on-the-fly RTD server creation. xlOil also supports macro-type functions that write to ranges on the sheet, and you can access the Excel Application object, hook Excel events, and pass any python object back to Excel and then back into any python function.
xlOil even offers simple and quick add-in deployment and two-way connection to Jupyter notebooks, making it easy to run worksheet functions in Jupyter and query variables in the jupyter kernel. On-the-fly creation/destruction of COM addin objects and Ribbon UI is also supported.
Check it out on Github and star it to encourage the developer to keep supporting this great contribution to the Open Source community!
https://github.com/cunnane/xloil