Passing file contents rather than filename to the xlrd module's open_workbook() method

Question

Is there a way to pass the contents of an Excel file, rather than a file name/reference, to the xlrd module's open_workbook() function? I've been trying to use the "file_contents" parameter for this purpose, but haven't had any success with it so far. Thank you.

Answer 1

@Ber's comment is correct. You will need to use the getvalue() method of the StringIO object and pass that to the file_content parameter in the function call.

f = StringIO.StringIO(content)
book = xlrd.open_workbook(file_contents = f.getvalue() )

Answer 2

In most places where an open file is needed, a StringIO object will also work.

You just cread a StringIO object from the file data and pass that object as the file to your function.