Reading an Excel file in PHP

I use PHP-ExcelReader to read xls files, and works great.


You have 2 choices as far as I know:

  1. Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader, which knows the Office 2003 binary format
  2. PHPExcel, which knows both Office 2003 as well as Excel 2007 (XML). (Follow the link, and you'll see they upgraded this library to PHPSpreadSheet)

PHPExcel uses Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader for the Office 2003 format.

Update: I once had to read some Excel files but I used the Office 2003 XML format in order to read them and told the people that were using the application to save and upload only that type of Excel file.