Import is a declaration, not a parser. Export is a print of what you already see. Once both are true, the boring half of every data project disappears — and this course shows you where the remaining decisions actually live.
Who this is for
Anyone who has a spreadsheet and wants it on the mesh — analysts, modellers, developers. You should be comfortable reading C#; the cells are small and every one opens with the inputs you are meant to change. No prior MeshWeaver experience is assumed beyond having opened a page.
What you will be able to do
- Read and write the sectioned CSV format the import pipeline speaks (type-marker blocks), and know why a declared import beats a hand-written parser
- Turn a CSV into typed rows — headers to properties, strings to dates and decimals — with the coercion rules that decide whether a file loads or lies
- Map an Excel worksheet onto a type: where the data starts, which rows are totals, how a lump sum is allocated across rows
- Export any page as PDF, DOCX or HTML, understand why the table of contents is truthful, and send a document as an email body or an attachment
The four lessons
| Lesson | What it answers | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Declared imports | Why say what the file is instead of parsing it — and what the sectioned format looks like. |
| 2 | CSV to typed rows | How a header row becomes properties and a string becomes a date without lying. |
| 3 | Excel workbooks | Worksheets, data-start rows, total rows to skip, and totals to allocate. |
| 4 | Export documents | PDF, DOCX and HTML from any page — printed, not approximated — and delivered by mail. |
How every lesson works
| Band | What it is |
|---|---|
| 📖 Theory | The idea, kept short, with the real code from the shipped modules. |
| ⚡ Experience it | A live cell. It runs when the page loads; it opens with the knobs you can change. |
| ✍️ Your turn | A workbench that ships red and a worked solution one click away. |
| ❓ Check yourself | A short quiz with instant answers. |
The worked example
The import lessons run on the Northwind trading dataset — categories, regions, orders — exactly as the Northwind Analytics app loads it through the Data Import module, so what you learn here is what a shipped application does at startup. The export lesson prints the page you are reading.
Ready? Start with Lesson 1 — Declared imports.