I am working on a project that is mostly Ruby on Rails. However, I need to generate and parse Excel files in this project (I know, I know...), so I've been using Perl's Spreadsheet::WriteExcel and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel which work well. However, what is the best way to combine this use of Perl with the larger Ruby on Rails app? Is calling the Perl script with backticks the kosher way to go about this? It feels a little hacky to me, but if that is the only (or best) way, then that's what I'll do. I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else has some suggestions or advise.

Thank you!