Spreadsheet::Read - Read the data from a spreadsheet
use Spreadsheet::Read; my $book = ReadData ("test.csv", sep => ";"); my $book = ReadData ("test.sxc"); my $book = ReadData ("test.ods"); my $book = ReadData ("test.xls"); my $book = ReadData ("test.xlsx"); my $book = ReadData ($fh, parser => "xls"); my $sheet = $book->[1]; # first datasheet my $cell = $book->[1]{A3}; # content of field A3 of sheet 1 my $cell = $book->[1]{cell}[1][3]; # same, unformatted
Spreadsheet::Read tries to transparently read *any* spreadsheet and return its content in a universal manner independent of the parsing module that does the actual spreadsheet scanning.
For OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice this module uses Spreadsheet::ReadSXC
For Microsoft Excel this module uses Spreadsheet::ParseExcel, Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX, or Spreadsheet::XLSX (discouraged).
For CSV this module uses Text::CSV_XS or Text::CSV_PP.
For SquirrelCalc there is a very simplistic built-in parser
The data is returned as an array reference:
$book = [ # Entry 0 is the overall control hash { sheets => 2, sheet => { "Sheet 1" => 1, "Sheet 2" => 2, }, type => "xls", parser => "Spreadsheet::ParseExcel", version => 0.59, error => undef, }, # Entry 1 is the first sheet { label => "Sheet 1", maxrow => 2, maxcol => 4, cell => [ undef, [ undef, 1 ], [ undef, undef, undef, undef, undef, "Nugget" ], ], attr => [], merged => [], A1 => 1, B5 => "Nugget", }, # Entry 2 is the second sheet { label => "Sheet 2", : :
To keep as close contact to spreadsheet users, row and column 1 have index 1 too in the cell element of the sheet hash, so cell "A1" is the same as cell [1, 1] (column first). To switch between the two, there are two helper functions available: cell2cr () and cr2cell ().
cell
cell2cr ()
cr2cell ()
The cell hash entry contains unformatted data, while the hash entries with the traditional labels contain the formatted values (if applicable).
The control hash (the first entry in the returned array ref), contains some spreadsheet meta-data. The entry sheet is there to be able to find the sheets when accessing them by name:
sheet
my %sheet2 = %{$book->[$book->[0]{sheet}{"Sheet 2"}]};
my $book = ReadData ($source [, option => value [, ... ]]); my $book = ReadData ("file.csv", sep => ',', quote => '"'); my $book = ReadData ("file.xls", dtfmt => "yyyy-mm-dd"); my $book = ReadData ("file.ods"); my $book = ReadData ("file.sxc"); my $book = ReadData ("content.xml"); my $book = ReadData ($content); my $book = ReadData ($fh, parser => "xls");
Tries to convert the given file, string, or stream to the data structure described above.
Processing Excel data from a stream or content is supported through a File::Temp temporary file or IO::Scalar when available.
Spreadsheet::ReadSXC does preserve sheet order as of version 0.20.
Currently supported options are:
Force the data to be parsed by a specific format. Possible values are csv, prl (or perl), sc (or squirelcalc), sxc (or oo, ods, openoffice, libreoffice) xls (or excel), and xlsx (or excel2007).
csv
prl
perl
sc
squirelcalc
sxc
oo
ods
openoffice
libreoffice
xls
excel
xlsx
excel2007
When parsing streams, instead of files, it is highly recommended to pass this option.
Spreadsheet::Read supports several underlying parsers per spreadsheet type. It will try those from most favored to least favored. When you have a good reason to prefer a different parser, you can set that in environment variables. The other options then will not be tested for:
env SPREADSHEET_READ_CSV=Text::CSV_PP ...
Control the generation of named cells ("A1" etc). Default is true.
A1
Control the generation of the {cell}[c][r] entries. Default is true.
Control the generation of the {attr}[c][r] entries. Default is false. See "Cell Attributes" below.
If set, ReadData will remove all trailing rows and columns per sheet that have no visual data. If a sheet has no data at all, the sheet will be skipped entirely when this attribute is true.
ReadData
This option is only valid if cells is true. The default value is true if cells is true, and false otherwise.
cells
If set, ReadData will remove trailing- and/or leading-whitespace from every field.
strip leading strailing ----- ------- --------- 0 n/a n/a 1 strip n/a 2 n/a strip 3 strip strip
Set separator for CSV. Default is comma ,.
,
Set quote character for CSV. Default is ".
"
Set the format for MS-Excel date fields that are set to use the default date format. The default format in Excel is "m-d-yy", which is both not year 2000 safe, nor very useful. The default is now "yyyy-mm-dd", which is more ISO-like.
m-d-yy
yyyy-mm-dd
Note that date formatting in MS-Excel is not reliable at all, as it will store/replace/change the date field separator in already stored formats if you change your locale settings. So the above mentioned default can be either "m-d-yy" OR "m/d/yy" depending on what that specific character happened to be at the time the user saved the file.
m/d/yy
Enable some diagnostic messages to STDERR.
The value determines how much diagnostics are dumped (using Data::Peek). A value of 9 and higher will dump the entire structure from the back-end parser.
9
All other attributes/options will be passed to the underlying parser if that parser supports attributes.
my $cell = cr2cell (col, row)
cr2cell () converts a (column, row) pair (1 based) to the traditional cell notation:
(column, row)
my $cell = cr2cell ( 4, 14); # $cell now "D14" my $cell = cr2cell (28, 4); # $cell now "AB4"
my ($col, $row) = cell2cr ($cell)
cell2cr () converts traditional cell notation to a (column, row) pair (1 based):
my ($col, $row) = cell2cr ("D14"); # returns ( 4, 14) my ($col, $row) = cell2cr ("AB4"); # returns (28, 4)
my @row = row ($sheet, $row) my @row = Spreadsheet::Read::row ($book->[1], 3)
Get full row of formatted values (like $sheet->{A3} .. $sheet->{G3})
$sheet->{A3} .. $sheet->{G3}
Note that the indexes in the returned list are 0-based.
row () is not imported by default, so either specify it in the use argument list, or call it fully qualified.
row ()
my @row = cellrow ($sheet, $row) my @row = Spreadsheet::Read::cellrow ($book->[1], 3)
Get full row of unformatted values (like $sheet->{cell}[1][3] .. $sheet->{cell}[7][3])
$sheet->{cell}[1][3] .. $sheet->{cell}[7][3]
cellrow () is not imported by default, so either specify it in the use argument list, or call it fully qualified.
cellrow ()
my @rows = rows ($sheet) my @rows = Spreadsheet::Read::rows ($book->[1])
Convert {cell}'s [column][row] to a [row][column] list.
{cell}
[column][row]
[row][column]
Note that the indexes in the returned list are 0-based, where the index in the {cell} entry is 1-based.
rows () is not imported by default, so either specify it in the use argument list, or call it fully qualified.
rows ()
parses ($format) Spreadsheet::Read::parses ("CSV")
parses () returns Spreadsheet::Read's capability to parse the required format. ReadData will pick its preferred parser for that format unless overruled. See parser.
parses ()
parser
parses () is not imported by default, so either specify it in the use argument list, or call it fully qualified.
my $v = Version () my $v = Spreadsheet::Read::Version () my $v = Spreadsheet::Read->VERSION;
Returns the current version of Spreadsheet::Read.
Version () is not imported by default, so either specify it in the use argument list, or call it fully qualified.
Version ()
This function returns exactly the same as Spreadsheet::Read->VERSION returns and is only kept for backward compatibility reasons.
Spreadsheet::Read->VERSION
In case of CSV parsing, ReadData will use the first line of the file to auto-detect the separation character if the first argument is a file and both sep and quote are not passed as attributes. Text::CSV_XS (or Text::CSV_PP) is able to automatically detect and use \r line endings.
sep
quote
\r
CSV can parse streams too, but be sure to pass sep and/or quote if these do not match the default , and ".
When an error is found in the CSV, it is automatically reported (to STDERR). The structure will store the error in $ss->[0]{error} as anonymous list returned by $csv->error_diag. See Text::CSV_XS for documentation.
$ss->[0]{error}
$csv->error_diag
my $ss = ReadData ("bad.csv"); $ss->[0]{error} and say $ss->[0]{error}[1];
If the constructor was called with attr having a true value, effort is made to analyze and store field attributes like this:
attr
{ label => "Sheet 1", maxrow => 5, maxcol => 2, cell => [ undef, [ undef, 1 ], [ undef, undef, undef, undef, undef, "Nugget" ], ], attr => [ undef, [ undef, { type => "numeric", fgcolor => "#ff0000", bgcolor => undef, font => "Arial", size => undef, format => "## ##0.00", halign => "right", valign => "top", uline => 0, bold => 0, italic => 0, wrap => 0, merged => 0, hidden => 0, locked => 0, enc => "utf-8", }, ] [ undef, undef, undef, undef, undef, { type => "text", fgcolor => "#e2e2e2", bgcolor => undef, font => "Letter Gothic", size => 15, format => undef, halign => "left", valign => "top", uline => 0, bold => 0, italic => 0, wrap => 0, merged => 0, hidden => 0, locked => 0, enc => "iso8859-1", }, ] merged => [], A1 => 1, B5 => "Nugget", },
This has now been partially implemented, mainly for Excel, as the other parsers do not (yet) support all of that. YMMV.
Note that only Spreadsheet::ReadSXC documents the use of merged cells, and not in a way useful for the spreadsheet consumer.
CSV does not support merged cells (though future implementations of CSV for the web might).
The documentation of merged areas in Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX can be found in Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Worksheet and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Cell.
None of basic Spreadsheet::XLSX, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel, and Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX manual pages mention merged cells at all.
This module just tries to return the information in a generic way.
Given this spreadsheet as an example
merged.xlsx: A B C +-----+-----------+ 1| | foo | +-----+ + 2| bar | | | +-----+-----+ 3| | urg | orc | +-----+-----+-----+
the information extracted from that undocumented information is returned in the merged entry of the sheet's hash as a list of top-left, bottom-right coordinate pars (col, row, col, row). For given example, that would be:
merged
$ss->{merged} = [ [ 1, 2, 1, 3 ], # A2-A3 [ 2, 1, 3, 2 ], # B1-C2 ];
When the attributes are also enabled, there is some merge information copied directly from the cell information, but again, that stems from code analysis and not from documentation:
my $ss = ReadData ("merged.xlsx", attr => 1)->[1]; foreach my $row (1 .. $ss->{maxrow}) { foreach my $col (1 .. $ss->{maxcol}) { my $cell = cr2cell ($col, $row); printf "%s %-3s %d ", $cell, $ss->{$cell}, $ss->{attr}[$col][$row]{merged}; } print "\n"; } A1 0 B1 foo 1 C1 1 A2 bar 1 B2 1 C2 1 A3 1 B3 urg 0 C3 orc 0
In this example, there is no way to see if B2 is merged to A2 or to B1 without analyzing all surrounding cells. This could as well mean A2:A3, B1:C1, B2:C2, as A2:A3, B1:B2, C1:C2, as A2:A3, B1:C2. Use the merged entry described above to find out what fields are merged to what other fields.
B2
A2
B1
A2:A3
B1:C1
B2:C2
B1:B2
C1:C2
B1:C2
This modules comes with a few tools that perform tasks from the FAQ, like "How do I select only column D through F from sheet 2 into a CSV file?"
If the module was installed without the tools, you can find them here: https://github.com/Tux/Spreadsheet-Read/tree/master/examples
xlscat
Show (parts of) a spreadsheet in plain text, CSV, or HTML
usage: xlscat [-s <sep>] [-L] [-n] [-A] [-u] [Selection] file.xls [-c | -m] [-u] [Selection] file.xls -i [-S sheets] file.xls Generic options: -v[#] Set verbose level (xlscat/xlsgrep) -d[#] Set debug level (Spreadsheet::Read) -u Use unformatted values --noclip Do not strip empty sheets and trailing empty rows and columns -e <enc> Set encoding for input and output -b <enc> Set encoding for input -a <enc> Set encoding for output Input CSV: --in-sep=c Set input sep_char for CSV Input XLS: --dtfmt=fmt Specify the default date format to replace 'm-d-yy' the default replacement is 'yyyy-mm-dd' Output Text (default): -s <sep> Use separator <sep>. Default '|', \n allowed -L Line up the columns -n [skip] Number lines (prefix with column number) optionally skip <skip> (header) lines -A Show field attributes in ANSI escapes -h[#] Show # header lines Output Index only: -i Show sheet names and size only Output CSV: -c Output CSV, separator = ',' -m Output CSV, separator = ';' Output HTML: -H Output HTML Selection: -S <sheets> Only print sheets <sheets>. 'all' is a valid set Default only prints the first sheet -R <rows> Only print rows <rows>. Default is 'all' -C <cols> Only print columns <cols>. Default is 'all' -F <flds> Only fields <flds> e.g. -FA3,B16 Ordering (column numbers in result set *after* selection): --sort=spec Sort output (e.g. --sort=3,2r,5n,1rn+2) +# - first # lines do not sort (header) # - order on column # lexical ascending #n - order on column # numeric ascending #r - order on column # lexical descending #rn - order on column # numeric descending
xlsgrep
Show (parts of) a spreadsheet that match a pattern in plain text, CSV, or HTML
usage: xlsgrep [-s <sep>] [-L] [-n] [-A] [-u] [Selection] pattern file.xls [-c | -m] [-u] [Selection] pattern file.xls -i [-S sheets] pattern file.xls Generic options: -v[#] Set verbose level (xlscat/xlsgrep) -d[#] Set debug level (Spreadsheet::Read) -u Use unformatted values --noclip Do not strip empty sheets and trailing empty rows and columns -e <enc> Set encoding for input and output -b <enc> Set encoding for input -a <enc> Set encoding for output Input CSV: --in-sep=c Set input sep_char for CSV Input XLS: --dtfmt=fmt Specify the default date format to replace 'm-d-yy' the default replacement is 'yyyy-mm-dd' Output Text (default): -s <sep> Use separator <sep>. Default '|', \n allowed -L Line up the columns -n [skip] Number lines (prefix with column number) optionally skip <skip> (header) lines -A Show field attributes in ANSI escapes -h[#] Show # header lines Grep options: -i Ignore case -w Match whole words only Output CSV: -c Output CSV, separator = ',' -m Output CSV, separator = ';' Output HTML: -H Output HTML Selection: -S <sheets> Only print sheets <sheets>. 'all' is a valid set Default only prints the first sheet -R <rows> Only print rows <rows>. Default is 'all' -C <cols> Only print columns <cols>. Default is 'all' -F <flds> Only fields <flds> e.g. -FA3,B16 Ordering (column numbers in result set *after* selection): --sort=spec Sort output (e.g. --sort=3,2r,5n,1rn+2) +# - first # lines do not sort (header) # - order on column # lexical ascending #n - order on column # numeric ascending #r - order on column # lexical descending #rn - order on column # numeric descending
xls2csv
Convert a spreadsheet to CSV. This is just a small wrapper over xlscat.
usage: xls2csv [ -o file.csv ] file.xls
ss2tk
Show a spreadsheet in a perl/Tk spreadsheet widget
usage: ss2tk [-w <width>] [X11 options] file.xls [<pattern>] -w <width> use <width> as default column width (4)
ssdiff
Show the differences between two spreadsheets.
usage: examples/ssdiff [--verbose[=1]] file.xls file.xlsx
New Spreadsheet::Read options are bound to happen. I'm thinking of an option that disables the reading of the data entirely to speed up an index request (how many sheets/fields/columns). See xlscat -i.
xlscat -i
Try to transparently support as many options as the encapsulated modules support regarding (un)formatted values, (date) formats, hidden columns rows or fields etc. These could be implemented like attr above but names meta, or just be new values in the attr hashes.
meta
I consider adding any spreadsheet interface that offers a usable API.
As long as the alternative has a good reason for its existence, and the API of that parser reasonable fits in my approach, I will consider to implement the glue layer, or apply patches to do so as long as these match what CONTRIBUTING.md describes.
Consider making the ref an object, though I currently don't see the big advantage (yet). Maybe I'll make it so that it is a hybrid functional / OO interface.
See Text::CSV_XS , Text::CSV_PP , and Text::CSV documentation.
Text::CSV is a wrapper over Text::CSV_XS (the fast XS version) and/or Text::CSV_PP (the pure perl version).
Spreadsheet::ParseExcel is the best parser for old-style Microsoft Excel (.xls) files.
Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX is like Spreadsheet::ParseExcel, but for new Microsoft Excel 2007+ files (.xlsx). They have the same API.
This module uses XML::Twig to parse the internal XML.
Spreadsheet::XLSX::Reader::LibXML is an alternative Microsoft 2007+ parser that uses XML::LibXML to parse the internal XML.
Work in progress. Much is relying on undocumented internals. The author gave up on making this work, so it is not enabled by default. Feel free submit patches to make it work.
See Spreadsheet::XLSX documentation.
This module is dead and deprecated. It is buggy and unmaintained. Please use Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX instead.
Spreadsheet::ReadSXC is a parser for OpenOffice/LibreOffice (.sxc and .ods) spreadsheet files.
See Spreadsheet::BasicRead for xlscat-like functionality (Excel only)
See Spreadsheet::ConvertAA for an alternative set of "cell2cr"/"cr2cell" pair.
Spreadsheet::Perl offers a Pure Perl implementation of a spreadsheet engine. Users that want this format to be supported in Spreadsheet::Read are hereby motivated to offer patches. It is not high on my TODO-list.
Spreadsheet::CSV offers the interesting approach of seeing all supported spreadsheet formats as if it were CSV, mimicking the Text::CSV_XS interface.
xls2csv offers an alternative for my xlscat -c, in the xls2csv tool, but this tool focuses on character encoding transparency, and requires some other modules.
xlscat -c
H.Merijn Brand, <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
Copyright (C) 2005-2015 H.Merijn Brand
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
To install Spreadsheet::Read, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Spreadsheet::Read
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Spreadsheet::Read
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.