Spreadsheet::ReadSXC - Extract OpenOffice 1.x spreadsheet data

DESCRIPTION

Spreadsheet::ReadSXC extracts data from OpenOffice 1.x spreadsheet
files (.sxc). It exports the function read_sxc() which takes a
filename and an optional reference to a hash of options as
arguments and returns a reference to a hash of references to
two-dimensional arrays. The hash keys correspond to the names of
worksheets in the OpenOffice workbook. The two-dimensional arrays
correspond to rows and cells in the respective spreadsheets. If
you don't like this because the order of sheets is not preserved
in a hash, read on. The 'OrderBySheet' option provides an array
of hashes instead.

If you prefer to unpack the .sxc file yourself, you can use the
function read_xml_file() instead and pass the path to content.xml
as an argument. Or you can extract the XML string from content.xml
and pass the string to the function read_xml_string(). Both
functions also take a reference to a hash of options as an
optional second argument.

Spreadsheet::ReadSXC uses XML::Twig to parse the XML
contained in .sxc files. Only the contents of text:p elements are
returned, not the actual values of table:value attributes. For
example, a cell might have a table:value-type attribute of
"currency", a table:value attribute of "-1500.99" and a
table:currency attribute of "USD". The text:p element would
contain "-$1,500.99". This is the string which is returned by the
read_sxc() function, not the value of -1500.99.

Spreadsheet::ReadSXC was written with data import into an SQL
database in mind. Therefore empty spreadsheet cells correspond to
undef values in array rows. The example code above shows how to
replace undef values with empty strings.

If the .sxc file contains an empty spreadsheet its hash element will
point to an empty array (unless you use the 'NoTruncate' option in
which case it will point to an array of an array containing one
undefined element).

OpenOffice uses UTF-8 encoding. It depends on your environment how
the data returned by the XML Parser is best handled:

  use Unicode::String qw(latin1 utf8);
  $unicode_string = utf8($$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0][0])->as_string;

  # this will not work for characters outside ISO-8859-1:

  $latin1_string = utf8($$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0][0])->latin1;

Of course there are other modules than Unicode::String on CPAN that
handle conversion between encodings. It's your choice.

Table rows in .sxc files may have a "table:number-rows-repeated"
attribute, which is often used for consecutive empty rows. When you
format whole rows and/or columns in OpenOffice, it sets the numbers
of rows in a worksheet to 32,000 and the number of columns to 256, even
if only a few lower-numbered rows and cells actually contain data.
Spreadsheet::ReadSXC truncates such sheets so that there are no empty
rows after the last row containing data and no empty columns after the
last column containing data (unless you use the 'NoTruncate' option).

Still it is perfectly legal for an .sxc file to apply the
"table:number-rows-repeated" attribute to rows that actually contain
data (although I have only been able to produce such files manually,
not through OpenOffice itself). To save on memory usage in these cases,
Spreadsheet::ReadSXC does not copy rows by value, but by reference
(remember that multi-dimensional arrays in Perl are really arrays of
references to arrays). Therefore, if you change a value in one row, it
is possible that you find the corresponding value in the next row
changed, too:

  $$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[0][0] = 'new string';
  print $$workbook_ref{"Sheet1"}[1][0];

As of version 0.20 the references returned by read_sxc() et al. remain
valid after subsequent calls to the same function. In earlier versions,
calling read_sxc() with a different file as the argument would change
the data referenced by the original return value, so you had to
derefence it before making another call. Thanks to H. Merijn Brand for
fixing this.


INSTALLATION

This is a Perl module distribution. It should be installed with whichever
tool you use to manage your installation of Perl, e.g. any of

  cpanm .
  cpan  .
  cpanp -i .

Consult https://www.cpan.org/modules/INSTALL.html for further instruction.
Should you wish to install this module manually, the procedure is

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install






BUG TRACKER

Please report bugs in this module via the Github bug queue at
L<https://github.com/Corion/Spreadsheet-ReadSXC/issues>


SEE ALSO

L<https://www.openoffice.org/xml/general.html> has extensive documentation
of the OpenOffice 1.x XML file format (soon to be replaced by the
OASIS file format (ODS), see L<http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/OpenDocument-v1.2.pdf>).

AUTHOR

Christoph Terhechte, E<lt>terhechte@cpan.orgE<gt>


COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2005-2019 by Christoph Terhechte

Copyright 2019- by Max Maischein

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.
