Excel UI for Ruby on Rails Database

I'm leaving the Excel part out of this, as I don't think its even possible, let alone practical in the long run.

Create your table in your Rails app. You can use the standard view that is created by the scaffold command.

then install the best_in_place gem by adding it to your gem file

gem 'best_in_place'

In your application.js file add best_in_place and jquery.purr after jquery in your file:

//= require jquery
//= require jquery.purr
//= require best_in_place

Create a coffee script file for your table's controller (if you scaffolded it, there will already be one). In my example I'm calling it my_tables:

my_tables.js.coffee:

jQuery ->
  $('.best_in_place').best_in_place()

That's about it for setup, now just modify your table to use the best_in_place class:

<h1>Listing my_tables</h1>

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Col1</th>
      <th>Col2</th>
      <th>Col3</th>
      <th>Col4</th>
      <th>Col5</th>

    </tr>
  </thead>

  <tbody>
    <% @my_tables.each do |my_table| %>
      <tr>
        <td><%= best_in_place my_table, :col1 %></td>
        <td><%= best_in_place my_table, :col2 %></td>
        <td><%= best_in_place my_table, :col3 %></td>
        <td><%= best_in_place my_table, :col4 %></td>
        <td><%= best_in_place my_table, :col5 %></td>

      </tr>
    <% end %>
  </tbody>
</table>

<br>

<%= link_to 'New My table', new_my_table_path %> 

The only difference is in the individual cells. Instead of the standard:

<td><%= my_table.col1 %></td>

We use the best_in_place method and pass it the object and a symbol of the column name instead of a dot method:

<td><%= best_in_place my_table, :col1 %></td>

Now if you refresh your view you'll see the same table as always. BUT click on any cell and it becomes editable. Change the value and hit ENTER. The new value stays. Reload the page and you'll see that it still has the new value you gave it.