Reading and writing to excel is often a requirement or business need. There are basically 2 ways where you can do that, use an existing library or build your own solution.
Now, before you start, keep in mind that there are 2 kinds of excel file format:
xls
A binary file format where you will need special parsers to read and it’s hard to create one
xlsx
Open XML format. It’s basically a container. Try renaming any office 2007 or office 2010 documents with extension ending with x (docx, ppsx, xlsx) to a zip file and open it. You’ll find a bunch of text and xml files.
If you want to build your own solution reading and writing a xlsx file, you can refer to this IBM article: Read and write Excel data with PHP
Or else you can rely on 2 open source libraries which will help you save lots of time in both PHP and .NET while working with excel files without having to reinvent the wheel again.
PHPExcel (PHP)
PHPExcel provides a set of classes for the PHP programming language, which allow you to write to and read from different file formats, like Excel 2007, PDF, HTML, … This project is built around Microsoft’s OpenXML standard and PHP.
Excel Data Reader (.NET)
Excel Data Reade Lightweight and fast library written in C# for reading Microsoft Excel files (’97-2007).
Cross-platform:
– Windows with .Net Framework 2
– Windows Mobile with Compact Framework
– Linux, OS X, BSD with Mono 2+
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