Question

this is my first question in stackoverflow. I am trying to use PHPExcel to create an HTML table from .xlsx file. You can find my project in:
http://rahulr92.x10.mx/excel/index.php
Login with username ‘admin’ and you will find an option to ‘View Table’. That page displays a table from previously uploaded .xlsx file. I am new to PHPExcel and used some standard code I found online. Here it is:

<?php
require_once '/Classes/PHPExcel.php';
$objReader = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createReader('Excel2007');
$objReader->setReadDataOnly(true);
$objPHPExcel = $objReader->load("..\excel.xlsx");
$objWorksheet = $objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet();
$highestRow = $objWorksheet->getHighestRow(); 
$highestColumn = $objWorksheet->getHighestColumn(); 
$highestColumnIndex = PHPExcel_Cell::columnIndexFromString($highestColumn); 
$user=strtolower($_GET['user']);
$r_count=0;
echo '<table border="1">' . "\n";
for ($row = 5; $row <= $highestRow; ++$row) {
if ($row <7 || $user=="admin" || strstr(strtolower($objWorksheet->getCellByColumnAndRow(8, $row)->getValue()),$user ))
 { 
 if($row>7)$r_count++;
 for ($col = 0; $col <= $highestColumnIndex; ++$col) {
      if(PHPExcel_Shared_Date::isDateTime($objWorksheet->getCellByColumnAndRow($col,$row)))
        echo '<td>' . date("d M Y",PHPExcel_Shared_Date::ExcelToPHP($objWorksheet->getCellByColumnAndRow($col, $row))) . '</td>' ;
      else
        echo '<td>' . $objWorksheet->getCellByColumnAndRow($col, $row)->getValue() . '</td>' . "\n";
  }
   echo '</tr>' . "\n";
}
}
 echo '</table>' . "\n";
 echo "No. of Entries: ".$r_count;
?>

Sorry for the sub-optimal code. When I run the php file, I get a table and all strings in it are displayed properly but datetime and number fields are filled with seemingly random gibberish. Please have a look at it from the above link. I have done some research and found out about the isDateTime() function that way. But it isn’t working or probably is used wrongly. I am having a tight deadline for this project, so it would be great if anyone could point me in the right direction. Really sorry if the answer was very obvious. Thanks a lot in advance.
Rahul

Answer 1

Don’t set $objReader->setReadDataOnly(true); if you want to be able to identify date/time values… Excel stores dates/times as floating point numbers, and the only way to differentiate a number from a date/time is using the format masking: isDateTime() uses that format masking to identify if a value is a number or a date/time… $objReader->setReadDataOnly(true) tells the file reader to read only the data (the numbers) and to ignore format masks, so it only reads the raw data.

However, I’m not sure I understand exactly what you mean by “random gibberish”… numbers should still display as numbers… can you please give an example.

EDIT

Note that cell methods such as getFormattedValue() will return numbers as they are format masked in the workbook, so date/time values will be formatted as dates/times, numbers will be displayed with appropriate number of decimal places, thousand separators or currencies or percentages (if they had the appropriate formatting in the Excel file), so you don’t need to test for isDateTime()…. as long as $objReader->setReadDataOnly(true) wasn’t set for teh reader.