How to read an excel file contents on client side?

Question

From the JSP page, I need to browse excel file and after selecting file on system, I need to read that excel file contents and fill my form.

Currently I have tried with below code but its only working in IE with some changes in IE internet options for ActiveXObject. Its not working in rest of the browsers.

<script>
    function mytest2() {
        var Excel;
        Excel = new ActiveXObject("Excel.Application"); 
        Excel.Visible = false;
        form1.my_textarea2.value = Excel.Workbooks.Open("C:/Documents and Settings/isadmin/Desktop/test.xlsx").ActiveSheet.Cells(1,1).Value;
        Excel.Quit();
    }
</script>

Please suggest some solution so that it works in all browsers.

Answer 1

An xlsx spreadsheet is a zip file with a bunch of xml files in it. Using something like zip.js, you can extract the xml files and parse them in the browser. xlsx.js does this. Here's my simple example. Copied here for convenience:

/*
    Relies on jQuery, underscore.js, Async.js (https://github.com/caolan/async), and zip.js (http://gildas-lormeau.github.com/zip.js).
    Tested only in Chrome on OS X.

    Call xlsxParser.parse(file) where file is an instance of File. For example (untested):

    document.ondrop = function(e) {
        var file = e.dataTransfer.files[0];
        excelParser.parse(file).then(function(data) {
            console.log(data);
        }, function(err) {
            console.log('error', err);
        });
    }
*/

xlsxParser = (function() {
    function extractFiles(file) {
        var deferred = $.Deferred();

        zip.createReader(new zip.BlobReader(file), function(reader) {
            reader.getEntries(function(entries) {
                async.reduce(entries, {}, function(memo, entry, done) {
                    var files = ['xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml', 'xl/sharedStrings.xml'];
                    if (files.indexOf(entry.filename) == -1) return done(null, memo);

                    entry.getData(new zip.TextWriter(), function(data) {
                        memo[entry.filename.split('/').pop()] = data;
                        done(null, memo);
                    });
                }, function(err, files) {
                    if (err) deferred.reject(err);
                    else deferred.resolve(files);
                });
            });
        }, function(error) { deferred.reject(error); });

        return deferred.promise();
    }

    function extractData(files) {
        var sheet = $(files['sheet1.xml']),
            strings = $(files['sharedStrings.xml']),
            data = [];

        var colToInt = function(col) {
            var letters = ["", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H", "I", "J", "K", "L", "M", "N", "O", "P", "Q", "R", "S", "T", "U", "V", "W", "X", "Y", "Z"];
            var col = $.trim(col).split('');

            var n = 0;

            for (var i = 0; i < col.length; i++) {
                n *= 26;
                n += letters.indexOf(col[i]);
            }

            return n;
        };

        var Cell = function(cell) {
            cell = cell.split(/([0-9]+)/);
            this.row = parseInt(cell[1]);
            this.column = colToInt(cell[0]);
        };

        var d = sheet.find('dimension').attr('ref').split(':');
        d = _.map(d, function(v) { return new Cell(v); });

        var cols = d[1].column - d[0].column + 1,
            rows = d[1].row - d[0].row + 1;

        _(rows).times(function() {
            var _row = [];
            _(cols).times(function() { _row.push(''); });
            data.push(_row);
        });

        sheet.find('sheetData row c').each(function(i, c) {
            var $cell = $(c),
                cell = new Cell($cell.attr('r')),
                type = $cell.attr('t'),
                value = $cell.find('v').text();

            if (type == 's') value = strings.find('si t').eq(parseInt(value)).text();

            data[cell.row - d[0].row][cell.column - d[0].column] = value;
        });

        return data;
    }

    return {
        parse: function(file) {
            return extractFiles(file).pipe(function(files) {
                return extractData(files);
            });
        }
    }
})();

Answer 2

You can load and open the file client side in most modern browsers using the HTML5 File API

Once you have loaded the file you can parse the contents with a library that supports certain excel output formats (such as csv / xlsx).

Here are a couple of options...

• CSV
• XLSX / CSV / XML