Ubuntu Manpage: Spreadsheet::ReadSXC - Extract OpenOffice 1.x spreadsheet data

Provided by: libspreadsheet-readsxc-perl_0.20-1_all

NAME

       Spreadsheet::ReadSXC - Extract OpenOffice 1.x spreadsheet data

SYNOPSIS

         use Spreadsheet::ReadSXC qw(read_sxc);
         my $workbook_ref = read_sxc("/path/to/file.sxc");

         # Alternatively, unpack the .sxc file yourself and pass content.xml

         use Spreadsheet::ReadSXC qw(read_xml_file);
         my $workbook_ref = read_xml_file("/path/to/content.xml");

         # Alternatively, pass the XML string directly

         use Spreadsheet::ReadSXC qw(read_xml_string);
         use Archive::Zip;
         my $zip = Archive::Zip->new("/path/to/file.sxc");
         my $content = $zip->contents('content.xml');
         my $workbook_ref = read_xml_string($content);

         # Control the output through a hash of options (below are the defaults):

         my %options = (
               ReplaceNewlineWith      => "",
               IncludeCoveredCells     => 0,
               DropHiddenRows          => 0,
               DropHiddenColumns       => 0,
               NoTruncate              => 0,
               StandardDate            => 0,
               StandardTime            => 0,
               OrderBySheet            => 0,
         );
         my $workbook_ref = read_sxc("/path/to/file.sxc", \%options );

         # Iterate over every worksheet, row, and cell:

         use Unicode::String qw(utf8);

         foreach ( sort keys %$workbook_ref ) {
            print "Worksheet ", $_, " contains ", $#{$$workbook_ref{$_}} + 1, " row(s):\n";
            foreach ( @{$$workbook_ref{$_}} ) {
               foreach ( map { defined $_ ? $_ : '' } @{$_} ) {
                  print utf8(" '$_'")->as_string;
               }
               print "\n";
            }
         }

         # Cell D2 of worksheet "Sheet1"

         $cell = $$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[1][3];

         # Row 1 of worksheet "Sheet1":

         @row = @{$$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0]};

         # Worksheet "Sheet1":

         @sheet = @{$$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}};

DESCRIPTION

Spreadsheet::ReadSXC extracts data from OpenOffice 1.x spreadsheet files (.sxc). It
exports the function read_sxc() which takes a filename and an optional reference to a hash
of options as arguments and returns a reference to a hash of references to two-dimensional
arrays. The hash keys correspond to the names of worksheets in the OpenOffice workbook.
The two-dimensional arrays correspond to rows and cells in the respective spreadsheets. If
you don't like this because the order of sheets is not preserved in a hash, read on. The
'OrderBySheet' option provides an array of hashes instead.

If you prefer to unpack the .sxc file yourself, you can use the function read_xml_file()
instead and pass the path to content.xml as an argument. Or you can extract the XML string
from content.xml and pass the string to the function read_xml_string(). Both functions
also take a reference to a hash of options as an optional second argument.

Spreadsheet::ReadSXC requires XML::Parser to parse the XML contained in .sxc files. Only
the contents of text:p elements are returned, not the actual values of table:value
attributes. For example, a cell might have a table:value-type attribute of "currency", a
table:value attribute of "-1500.99" and a table:currency attribute of "USD". The text:p
element would contain "-$1,500.99". This is the string which is returned by the read_sxc()
function, not the value of -1500.99.

Spreadsheet::ReadSXC was written with data import into an SQL database in mind. Therefore
empty spreadsheet cells correspond to undef values in array rows. The example code above
shows how to replace undef values with empty strings.

If the .sxc file contains an empty spreadsheet its hash element will point to an empty
array (unless you use the 'NoTruncate' option in which case it will point to an array of
an array containing one undefined element).

OpenOffice uses UTF-8 encoding. It depends on your environment how the data returned by
the XML Parser is best handled:

use Unicode::String qw(latin1 utf8);
$unicode_string = utf8($$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0][0])->as_string;

# this will not work for characters outside ISO-8859-1:

$latin1_string = utf8($$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0][0])->latin1;

Of course there are other modules than Unicode::String on CPAN that handle conversion
between encodings. It's your choice.

Table rows in .sxc files may have a "table:number-rows-repeated" attribute, which is often
used for consecutive empty rows. When you format whole rows and/or columns in OpenOffice,
it sets the numbers of rows in a worksheet to 32,000 and the number of columns to 256,
even if only a few lower-numbered rows and cells actually contain data.
Spreadsheet::ReadSXC truncates such sheets so that there are no empty rows after the last
row containing data and no empty columns after the last column containing data (unless you
use the 'NoTruncate' option).

Still it is perfectly legal for an .sxc file to apply the "table:number-rows-repeated"
attribute to rows that actually contain data (although I have only been able to produce
such files manually, not through OpenOffice itself). To save on memory usage in these
cases, Spreadsheet::ReadSXC does not copy rows by value, but by reference (remember that
multi-dimensional arrays in Perl are really arrays of references to arrays). Therefore, if
you change a value in one row, it is possible that you find the corresponding value in the
next row changed, too:

$$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0][0] = 'new string';
print $$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[1][0];

As of version 0.20 the references returned by read_sxc() et al. remain valid after
subsequent calls to the same function. In earlier versions, calling read_sxc() with a
different file as the argument would change the data referenced by the original return
value, so you had to derefence it before making another call. Thanks to H. Merijn Brand
for fixing this.

OPTIONS

       ReplaceNewlineWith
           By default, newlines within cells are ignored and all lines in a cell are concatenated
           to a single string which does not contain a newline. To keep the newline characters,
           use the following key/value pair in your hash of options:

             ReplaceNewlineWith => "\n"

           However, you may replace newlines with any string you like.

       IncludeCoveredCells
           By default, the content of cells that are covered by other cells is ignored because
           you wouldn't see it in OpenOffice unless you unmerge the merged cells. To include
           covered cells in the data structure which is returned by parse_sxc(), use the
           following key/value pair in your hash of options:

             IncludeCoveredCells => 1

       DropHiddenRows
           By default, hidden rows are included in the data structure returned by parse_sxc(). To
           drop those rows, use the following key/value pair in your hash of options:

             DropHiddenRows => 1

       DropHiddenColumns
           By default, hidden columns are included in the data structure returned by parse_sxc().
           To drop those rows, use the following key/value pair in your hash of options:

             DropHiddenColumns => 1

       NoTruncate
           By default, the two-dimensional arrays that contain the data within each worksheet are
           truncated to get rid of empty rows below the last row containing data and empty
           columns beyond the last column containing data. If you prefer to keep those rows and
           columns, use the following key/value pair in your hash of options:

             NoTruncate => 1

       StandardDate
           By default, date cells are returned as formatted. If you prefer to obtain the date
           value as contained in the table:date-value attribute, use the following key/value pair
           in your hash of options:

             StandardDate => 1

       StandardTime
           By default, time cells are returned as formatted. If you prefer to obtain the time
           value as contained in the table:time-value attribute, use the following key/value pair
           in your hash of options:

             StandardTime => 1

           These options are a first step on the way to a different approach at reading data from
           .sxc files. There should be more options to read in values instead of the strings
           OpenOffice displays. It should give more flexibility in working with the data obtained
           from OpenOffice spreadsheets. 'float' and 'percentage' values could be next.
           'currency' is less obvious, though, as we need to consider both its value and the
           'table:currency' attribute. Formulas and array formulas are yet another issue. I
           probably won't deal with this until I've given this module an object-oriented
           interface.

       OrderBySheet
           The disadvantage of storing worksheets by name in a hash is that the order of sheets
           is lost. If you prefer not to obtain such a hash, but an array of worksheets insted,
           use the following key/value pair in your hash of options:

             OrderBySheet => 1

           Thus the read_sxc function will return an array of hashes, each of which will have two
           keys, "label" and "data". The value of "label" is the name of the sheet. The value of
           data is a reference to a two-dimensional array containing rows and columns of the
           worksheet:

             my $worksheets_ref = read_sxc("/path/to/file.sxc");
             my $name_of_first_sheet = $$worksheets_ref[0]{label};
             my $first_cell_of_first_sheet = $$worksheets_ref[0]{data}[0][0];

AUTHOR

       Christoph Terhechte, <terhechte@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE