read-excel-file

Read small to medium *.xlsx files in a browser or Node.js. Parse to JSON with a strict schema.

Demo

Restrictions

There have been some complaints about this library not being able to handle large *.xlsx spreadsheets. It's true that this library's main point have been usability and convenience, and not performance or the ability to handle huge datasets. For example, the time of parsing a 2000 rows / 20 columns file is about 3 seconds, and when parsing a 30k+ rows file, it may throw a RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded. So, for handling huge datasets, use something like xlsx package instead. This library is suitable for handling small to medium *.xlsx files.

GitHub

On March 9th, 2020, GitHub, Inc. silently banned my account (and all my libraries) without any notice. I opened a support ticked but they didn't answer. Because of that, I had to move all my libraries to GitLab.

Install

npm install read-excel-file --save

If you're not using a bundler then use a standalone version from a CDN.

Browser

<input type="file" id="input" />

import readXlsxFile from 'read-excel-file'

const input = document.getElementById('input')

input.addEventListener('change', () => {
  readXlsxFile(input.files[0]).then((rows) => {
    // `rows` is an array of rows
    // each row being an array of cells.
  })
})

Node.js

const readXlsxFile = require('read-excel-file/node');

// File path.
readXlsxFile('/path/to/file').then((rows) => {
  // `rows` is an array of rows
  // each row being an array of cells.
})

// Readable Stream.
readXlsxFile(fs.createReadStream('/path/to/file')).then((rows) => {
  ...
})

Dates

XLSX format has no dedicated "date" type so dates are stored internally as simply numbers along with a "format" (e.g. "MM/DD/YY"). When using readXlsx() with schema parameter all dates get parsed correctly in any case. But if using readXlsx() without schema parameter (to get "raw" data) then this library attempts to guess whether a cell value is a date or not by examining the cell "format" (e.g. "MM/DD/YY"), so in most cases dates are detected and parsed automatically. For exotic cases one can pass an explicit dateFormat parameter (e.g. "MM/DD/YY") to instruct the library to parse numbers with such "format" as dates:

readXlsxFile(file, { dateFormat: 'MM/DD/YY' })

JSON

To convert rows to JSON pass schema option to readXlsxFile(). It will return { rows, errors } object instead of just rows.

// An example *.xlsx document:
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// | START DATE | NUMBER OF STUDENTS | IS FREE | COURSE TITLE |    CONTACT     |  STATUS   |
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// | 03/24/2018 |         10         |   true  |  Chemistry   | (123) 456-7890 | SCHEDULED |
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

const schema = {
  'START DATE': {
    prop: 'date',
    type: Date
    // Excel stores dates as integers.
    // E.g. '24/03/2018' === 43183.
    // Such dates are parsed to UTC+0 timezone with time 12:00 .
  },
  'NUMBER OF STUDENTS': {
    prop: 'numberOfStudents',
    type: Number,
    required: true
  },
  // 'COURSE' is not a real Excel file column name,
  // it can be any string — it's just for code readability.
  'COURSE': {
    prop: 'course',
    type: {
      'IS FREE': {
        prop: 'isFree',
        type: Boolean
        // Excel stored booleans as numbers:
        // `1` is `true` and `0` is `false`.
        // Such numbers are parsed to booleans.
      },
      'COURSE TITLE': {
        prop: 'title',
        type: String
      }
    }
  },
  'CONTACT': {
    prop: 'contact',
    required: true,
    type: (value) => {
      const number = parsePhoneNumber(value)
      if (!number) {
        throw new Error('invalid')
      }
      return number
    }
  },
  'STATUS': {
    prop: 'status',
    type: String,
    oneOf: [
      'SCHEDULED',
      'STARTED',
      'FINISHED'
    ]
  }
}

readXlsxFile(file, { schema }).then(({ rows, errors }) => {
  // `errors` have shape `{ row, column, error, value }`.
  errors.length === 0

  rows === [{
    date: new Date(2018, 2, 24),
    numberOfStudents: 10,
    course: {
      isFree: true,
      title: 'Chemistry'
    },
    contact: '+11234567890',
    status: 'SCHEDULED'
  }]
})

If no type is specified then the cell value is returned "as is".

There are also some additional exported types:

• Integer for parsing integer Numbers.
• URL for parsing URLs.
• Email for parsing email addresses.

A schema entry for a column may also define an optional validate(value) function for validating the parsed value: in that case, it must throw an Error if the value is invalid.

import convertToJson from "read-excel-file/schema"

// `data` is an array of rows, each row being an array of cells.
// `schema` is a "to JSON" convertion schema (see above).
const objects = convertToJson(data, schema)

Map

Sometimes, a developer might want to use some other (more advanced) solution for schema parsing and validation (like yup). If a developer passes a map instead of a schema to readXlsxFile(), then it would just map each data row to a JSON object without doing any parsing or validation.

// An example *.xlsx document:
// ------------------------------------------------------------
// | START DATE | NUMBER OF STUDENTS | IS FREE | COURSE TITLE |
// ------------------------------------------------------------
// | 03/24/2018 |         10         |   true  |  Chemistry   |
// ------------------------------------------------------------

const map = {
  'START DATE': 'date',
  'NUMBER OF STUDENTS': 'numberOfStudents',
  'COURSE': {
    'course': {
      'IS FREE': 'isFree',
      'COURSE TITLE': 'title'
    }
  }
}

readXlsxFile(file, { map }).then(({ rows }) => {
  rows === [{
    date: new Date(2018, 2, 24),
    numberOfStudents: 10,
    course: {
      isFree: true,
      title: 'Chemistry'
    }
  }]
})

Displaying schema errors

A React component for displaying schema parsing/validation errors could look like this:

import { parseExcelDate } from 'read-excel-file'

function ParseExcelError({ children: error }) {
  // Get a human-readable value.
  let value = error.value
  if (error.type === Date) {
    value = parseExcelDate(value).toString()
  }
  // Render error summary.
  return (
    <div>
      <code>"{error.error}"</code>
      {' for value '}
      <code>"{value}"</code>
      {' in column '}
      <code>"{error.column}"</code>
      {error.type && ' of type '}
      {error.type && <code>"{error.type.name}"</code>}
      {' in row '}
      <code>"{error.row}"</code>
    </div>
  )
}

Transforming rows/columns before schema is applied

When using a schema there's also an optional transformData(data) parameter which can be used for the cases when the spreadsheet rows/columns aren't in the correct format. For example, the heading row may be missing, or there may be some purely presentational or empty rows. Example:

readXlsxFile(file, {
  schema,
  transformData(data) {
    // Adds header row to the data.
    return [['ID', 'NAME', ...]].concat(data)
    // Removes empty rows.
    return data.filter(row => row.filter(column => column !== null).length > 0)
  }
})

TypeScript

See testing index.d.ts.

Browser compatibility

Node.js *.xlxs parser uses xpath and xmldom packages for XML parsing. The same packages could be used in a browser because all modern browsers (except IE 11) have native DOMParser built-in which could is used instead (meaning smaller footprint and better performance) but since Internet Explorer 11 support is still required the browser version doesn't use the native DOMParser and instead uses xpath and xmldom packages for XML parsing just like the Node.js version.

Gotchas

Formulas

Dynamically calculated cells using formulas (SUM, etc) are not supported.

Advanced

By default it reads the first sheet in the document. If you have multiple sheets in your spreadsheet then pass either sheet: number (sheet index, starting from 1) or sheet: string (sheet name) as part of the options argument (options.sheet is 1 by default):

readXlsxFile(file, { sheet: 2 }).then((data) => {
  ...
})

readXlsxFile(file, { sheet: 'Sheet1' }).then((data) => {
  ...
})

To get the list of sheets one can pass getSheets: true option:

readXlsxFile(file, { getSheets: true }).then((sheets) => {
  // sheets === [{ name: 'Sheet1' }, { name: 'Sheet2' }]
})

CDN

One can use any npm CDN service, e.g. unpkg.com or jsdelivr.net

<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/bundle/read-excel-file.min.js"></script>

<script>
  var input = document.getElementById('input')
  input.addEventListener('change', function() {
    readXlsxFile(input.files[0]).then(function() {
      // `rows` is an array of rows
      // each row being an array of cells.
    })
  })
</script>

References

For XML parsing xmldom and xpath are used.

License

MIT