synthdata-extract

Synthdata Extract

Extract every sheet of one or more Excel workbooks to JSON files. Each sheet becomes a JSON array of row objects keyed by header name.

Prerequisites

pip install openpyxl --break-system-packages

Workflow

Step 1: Locate the source file(s)

Ask the user which file(s) to extract, or inspect the current directory. Either:

• A single file: ./data.xlsx
• A directory containing .xlsx files: ./data/

Step 2: Run the extraction

python scripts/extract.py --input ./data.xlsx --output ./json/
# or multiple files / a directory
python scripts/extract.py --input ./data/ --output ./json/

CLI flags:

Flag	Default	Description
--input	.	Input .xlsx file, or directory containing .xlsx files
--output	./json	Output directory for JSON files
--title-row	auto	auto (detect), yes (skip row 1), no (row 1 is headers)
--flatten	false	If true, output single file per workbook instead of per sheet
--indent	2	JSON indent (0 for compact)

The script:

• Auto-detects title rows by checking if row 1 has only one non-empty cell (a merged banner)
• Skips empty rows
• Serializes dates as ISO strings
• Names outputs as <workbook>_<sheet>.json (or <sheet>.json if one workbook)

Step 3: Report results

Print row counts per sheet and the output directory path.

Convention

This skill reads Excel files produced by synthdata-generate by default (row 1 = title banner, row 2 = column headers, row 3+ = data). It also handles plain sheets (row 1 = headers, row 2+ = data) when --title-row no is set or when auto-detection determines no title row exists.