Surrounding Box Border in Axlsx

boxed_border.rb

require 'axlsx'
p = Axlsx::Package.new
p.workbook do |wb|
 
  # Stuff like this is why I LOVE RUBY
  # If you dont know about hash default values
  # LEARN IT! LIVE IT! LOVE IT!
  defaults =  { :style => :thick, :color => "000000" }
  borders = Hash.new do |hash, key|
    hash[key] = wb.styles.add_style :border => defaults.merge( { :edges => key.to_s.split('_').map(&:to_sym) } ) 
  end
  top_row =  [0, borders[:top_left], borders[:top], borders[:top], borders[:top_right]]
  middle_row = [0, borders[:left], nil, nil, borders[:right]]
  bottom_row = [0, borders[:bottom_left], borders[:bottom], borders[:bottom], borders[:bottom_right]]

  wb.add_worksheet(:name => "Boxed Border") do |ws|
    ws.add_row []
    ws.add_row ['', 1,2,3,4], :style => top_row
    ws.add_row ['', 5,6,7,8], :style => middle_row
    ws.add_row ['', 9, 10, 11, 12]

    #This works too!
    ws.rows.last.style = bottom_row
  end
end
p.serialize 'boxed_border.xlsx'

For me styles are added after... and I have to refactor this :

def set_project_sheet_styles(sheet, styles)

    top_border =    styles.add_style({:border => { :style => :thick, :color => 'F000000', :name => :top, :edges => [:top] }})
    right_border =  styles.add_style({:border => { :style => :thick, :color => 'F000000', :name => :right, :edges => [:right] }})
    bottom_border = styles.add_style({:border => { :style => :thick, :color => 'F000000', :name => :bottom, :edges => [:bottom] }})
    left_border =   styles.add_style({:border => { :style => :thick, :color => 'F000000', :name => :left, :edges => [:left] }})

    sheet['A3:A46'].each do |cell|
      cell.style = right_border
    end
    %w{B2:J2 E31:J31}.each do |cells|
      sheet[cells].each do |cell|
        cell.style = bottom_border
      end
    end
    %w{B47:J47 E14:J14 E26:J26}.each do |cells|
      sheet[cells].each do |cell|
        cell.style = top_border
      end
    end
    %w{D3:D6 D8:D13 D15:D16 D18:D23 D25:D30 D32:D43 D45:D46}.each do |cells|
      (sheet[cells]).each do |cell|
        cell.style = left_border
      end
    end
    %w{K3:K46 E3:E25 H3:H25 E32:E46}.each do |cells|
      sheet[cells].each do |cell|
        cell.style = left_border
      end
    end
    %w{E13 H13}.each do |cell_pos|
      sheet[cell_pos].style = styles.add_style({:border => { :style => :thick, :color => 'F000000', :name => :top, :edges => [:left, :bottom] }})
    end
    %w{J7 J17 J24 J31 J44}.each do |cell_pos|
      sheet[cell_pos].style = right_border
    end
    %w{J14 J32}.each do |cell_pos|
      sheet[cell_pos].style = styles.add_style({:border => { :style => :thick, :color => 'F000000', :name => :top, :edges => [:top, :right] }})
    end
# and many boxes like that ...
    sheet.column_widths 2, 25, 20, 10, 12, 2, 12, 12, 2, 12
  end

For this use case, I would define the following styles:

top_left, top, top_right, right, bottom_right, bottom, bottom_left, left

and apply them as I needed. I know this is a PITA!
Style in Office Open XML is really way too much work.
It is very sad that they could not learn from CSS when they designed the spec.

Inheriting styles would simply this so much.....

If you are looking to add some functionality to the library, there are a couple of things you are going to want to be sure to understand.

1. Style is an integer value defined on each cell.
2. That integer value looks up one (and only one) xf record from Style#xfs
3. Incremental styles are possible with dxf records

There is a pretty steep learning curve here, so in addition to understanding the spec, I find it helpful to unzip a saved file from excel that gives me the results I want, and analyze that to see how MS solved the problem.