Question

I wanted to read excel file so i did following steps. First creating .csv file of the .xls file. But .csv file is opening in excel.

   NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
   NSString *xlsFilePath = [bundle pathForResource:@"sampleXLSFile" ofType:@"xls"];
   NSString *csvFilePathLoc =  [[xlsFilePath stringByDeletingLastPathComponent] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"NewSample.csv"];
   NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:xlsFilePath];
   NSLog(@"data value: %@", data);
   NSFileManager *csvFile = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

if([csvFile createFileAtPath:csvFilePathLoc contents:data attributes:nil])
{
    NSLog(@"File created");
}
else {
    NSLog(@"File not created");
}

NSString *contentsOfCSVFile = [NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:csvFilePathLoc];
NSLog(@"contentsOfCSVFile value: %@",contentsOfCSVFile);

NewSample.csv file is created at application folder location. But when its not comma seperated it still opens in excel format.And when i NSLog the contentsOfCSVFile all data is encrypted. Can any body help? How to apply encoding and decoding?

Answer 1

All you are doing is copying the exact content of the xls file to a new file with .csv on the end. Changing the file extension does not convert the file format automatically. You need to put a bit in between

NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:xlsFilePath];

and

if([csvFile createFileAtPath:csvFilePathLoc contents:data attributes:nil])

that parses the data as an Excel file and turns it into a CSV file. This is probably a non trivial exercise. Best of luck.