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PHP read excel template?

I've never found anything PHP related that can directly handle input from an XLS...I've also had to convert to a CSV. If you're looking to make the template web based, wouldn't it be easier to recreate it online?

reply to johnnyboyct
Ive found some stuff that works to read or write, but nothing that works well both ways. We have a few REALLY complex sheets and so far the only thing I can do is save it as xml, then customize the xml with data from the app. Its a pain in the ass though.
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Connecticut Web Design and Development

If you are running PHP on a Windows server I believe you can open excel docs naively using COM or something. Its slow and horrible but would probably work.

Outside of that improbably setup there really isn't a way and I have researched it a bit.

Hmmm, any links describing the com thing? I have no clue what to google.

reply to johnnyboyct
Let me see if I understand. You have an Excel spreadsheet that you with to open as a web page, modify, and save the modifications back to a web page? You're esentially using Excel as the data back-end for a web application?

reply to johnnyboyct
Not really,

Right now, they use a spreedsheet for this big long project process that consists of about 5 tabs. My app does 4 of 5.

But there's a ton of calculations on the next tab of the sheet that the web app doesn't do.

Id like to read the file with formatting, and calcs, and just fill in the blanks. The only way I have found so far is to:

in excel output the sheet as XML
Regenerate that xml with my blanks filled in

But its like 100000 lines
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Connecticut Web Design and Development

Excel spreadsheets are limited to 65,535 lines, but I get your point. In all honesty, Excel shouldn't be levereged in this way. Though it is technically capable, it isn't designed for highly complex and/or mission critical financial calculations. I've seen entire accounting departments running on Excel/VBA solutions, but that doesn't make it right.

If you're already producing the input data for this application, why not implement a web application that replaces this spreadsheet entirely?

Well thats the goal, and Ive done 4 of 5 sheets, but the last sheet is a nightmare. Ive recreated 80% of it with ajax and JS, but really its overkill. They cant address the real issues atm so I end up recreating a flawed spreadsheet...
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Connecticut Web Design and Development

I presume that "can't" is because of looming year-end festivities?

reply to johnnyboyct
If the sheets are that big and complex then the script will time out as using Excel naively on PHP is slow; brutally, noticeably slow. COM is basically a windows thing that allows apps to talk to other apps... If you want to try it start:

»ca.php.net/manual/en/book.com.php
»devzone.zend.com/article/3336-Re···with-php

Non COM option that requires PHP5:
»www.eephp.com/

haven't used it...yet... but if you find success with it let me know.