read-excel-file

Read .xlsx files in a web browser or in Node.js.

It also supports parsing spreadsheet rows into JSON objects using a schema.

Demo

Also check out write-excel-file for writing .xlsx files.

Performance

Here're the results of reading sample .xlsx files of different sizes:

Install

npm install read-excel-file --save

Alternatively, one could include it on a web page directly via a <script/> tag.

Use

Browser

Example 1: User chooses a file and the web application reads it.

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

import readXlsxFile from 'read-excel-file/browser'

const input = document.getElementById('input')

input.addEventListener('change', () => {
  readXlsxFile(input.files[0]).then((rows) => {
    // `rows` is an array of "rows".
    // Each "row" is an array of "cells".
    // Each "cell" is a value: string, number, Date, boolean.
  })
})

Example 2: Application fetches a file from a URL and reads it.

fetch('https://example.com/spreadsheet.xlsx')
  .then(response => response.blob())
  .then(blob => readXlsxFile(blob))
  .then((rows) => {
    // `rows` is an array of "rows".
    // Each "row" is an array of "cells".
    // Each "cell" is a value: string, number, Date, boolean.
  })

In summary, it can read data from a File, a Blob or an ArrayBuffer.

Note: Internet Explorer 11 is an old browser that doesn't support Promise and would require a polyfill to work.

Node.js

Example 1: Read data from a file at file path.

// Import from '/node' subpackage.
import readXlsxFile from 'read-excel-file/node'

// Read data from a file by file path.
readXlsxFile('/path/to/file').then((rows) => {
  // `rows` is an array of "rows".
  // Each "row" is an array of "cells".
  // Each "cell" is a value: string, number, Date, boolean.
})

Example 2: Read data from a Stream

// Read data from a `Stream`.
readXlsxFile(fs.createReadStream('/path/to/file')).then((rows) => {
  // `rows` is an array of "rows".
  // Each "row" is an array of "cells".
  // Each "cell" is a value: string, number, Date, boolean.
})

It could also read data from a Buffer or a Blob.

In summary, it can read data from a file path, a Stream, a Buffer or a Blob.

Universal

The one that works both in a web browser and Node.js. Only supports a Blob for input, which could be a bit less convenient for some.

// Import from '/universal' subpackage.
import readXlsxFile from 'read-excel-file/universal'

// Read data from a `Blob` with `.xlsx` file contents.
readXlsxFile(blob).then((rows) => {
  // `rows` is an array of "rows".
  // Each "row" is an array of "cells".
  // Each "cell" is a value: string, number, Date, boolean.
})

Web Worker

Example 1: User chooses a file and the web application reads it in a Web Worker to avoid freezing the UI on large files.

// Step 1: Initialize Web Worker.

const worker = new Worker('web-worker.js')

worker.onmessage = function(event) {
  // `event.data` is a `File`.
  console.log(event.data)
}

worker.onerror = function(event) {
  console.error(event.message)
}

// Step 2: User chooses a file and the application sends it to the Web Worker.

const input = document.getElementById('input')

input.addEventListener('change', () => {
  worker.postMessage(input.files[0])
})

web-worker.js

// Import from '/web-worker' subpackage.
import readXlsxFile from 'read-excel-file/web-worker'

onmessage = function(event) {
  readXlsxFile(event.data).then((rows) => {
    // `rows` is an array of "rows".
    // Each "row" is an array of "cells".
    // Each "cell" is a value: string, number, Date, boolean.
    postMessage(rows)
  })
}

Multiple Sheets

By default, it only reads the first "sheet" in the file. If you have multiple sheets in your file then pass either a sheet number (starting from 1) or a sheet name in the options argument.

Example 1: Reads the second sheet.

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

Example 2: Reads the sheet called "Sheet1".

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

To get the names of all available sheets, use readSheetNames() function:

// The function could be imported from any sub-package:
// 'read-excel-file/browser', 'read-exel-file/node', 'read-excel-file/web-worker', etc.
import { readSheetNames } from 'read-excel-file/browser'

readSheetNames(file).then((sheetNames) => {
  // sheetNames === ['Sheet1', 'Sheet2']
})

Dates

.xlsx file format originally had no dedicated "date" type, so dates are in almost all cases stored simply as numbers, equal to the count of days since 01/01/1900. To correctly interpret such numbers as dates, each date cell has a special "format" (example: "d mmm yyyy") that instructs the spreadsheet viewer application to format the number in the cell as a date in a given format.

When using readXlsxFile() with a schema parameter, all columns having type: Date are automatically parsed as dates.

When using readXlsxFile() without a schema parameter, it attempts to guess whether the cell value is a date or a number by looking at the cell's "format" — if the "format" is one of the standard date formats then the cell value is interpreted as a date. So usually there's no need to configure anything and it usually works out-of-the-box.

Sometimes though, an .xlsx file might use a non-standard date format like "mm/dd/yyyy". To read such files correctly, pass a dateFormat parameter to tell it to parse cells having such "format" as date cells.

readXlsxFile(file, { dateFormat: 'mm/dd/yyyy' })

Numbers

In .xlsx files, numbers are stored as strings. read-excel-file manually parses such numeric cell values from strings to numbers. But there's an inherent issue with javascript numbers in general: their floating-point precision might not be enough for applications that require 100% precision. An example would be finance and banking. To support such demanding use-cases, this library supports passing a custom parseNumber(string) function as an option.

Example: Use "decimals" to represent numbers with 100% precision in banking applications.

import Decimal from 'decimal.js'

readXlsxFile(file, {
  parseNumber: (string) => new Decimal(string)
})

Strings

By default, it automatically trims all string cell values. To disable this feature, pass trim: false option.

readXlsxFile(file, { trim: false })

Formulas

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

Performance

There have been some reports about performance issues when reading extremely large .xlsx spreadsheets using this library. It's true that this library's main point have been usability and convenience, and not performance when handling huge datasets. For example, the time of parsing a file with 100,000 rows could be up to 10 seconds. If your application has to quickly read huge datasets, perhaps consider using something like xlsx package instead. There're no comparative benchmarks between the two packages, so we don't know how much the difference would be. If you'll be making any benchmarks, share those in the "Issues" so that we could include them in this readme.

Schema

To read spreadsheet data and then convert each row to a JSON object, pass a schema option to readXlsxFile(). When doing so, instead of returning an array of rows of cells, it will return an object of shape { rows, errors } where rows is gonna be an array of JSON objects created from the spreadsheet rows according to the schema, and errors is gonna be an array of any errors encountered during the conversion.

The spreadsheet should adhere to a certain structure: first goes a header row with only column titles, rest are the data rows.

The schema should describe every property of the JSON object:

• what is the property name
• what column to read the value from
• how to validate the value
• how to parse the value

A key of a schema entry represents the name of the property. The value of the schema entry describes the rest:

• column — The title of the column to read the value from.
  • If the column is missing from the spreadsheet, the property value will be undefined.
    • This can be overridden by passing schemaPropertyValueForMissingColumn option. Is undefined by default.
  • If the column is present in the spreadsheet but is empty, the property value will be null.
    • This can be overridden by passing schemaPropertyValueForMissingValue option. Is null by default.
• required — (optional) Is the value required?
  • Could be one of:
    • required: boolean
      • true — The column must not be missing from the spreadsheet and the cell value must not be empty.
      • false — The column can be missing from the spreadsheet and the cell value can be empty.
    • required: (object) => boolean — A function returning true or false depending on the other properties of the object.
  • It could be configured to skip required validation for missing columns by passing schemaPropertyShouldSkipRequiredValidationForMissingColumn function as an option. By default it's (column, { object }) => false meaning that when column is missing from the spreadsheet, it will not skip required validation for it.
• validate(value) — (optional) Validates the value. Is only called for non-empty cells. If the value is invalid, this function should throw an error.
• schema — (optional) If the value is going to be a nested object, schema should describe all of its properties.
  • If all of its property values happen to be empty (undefined or null), the nested object will be replaced with null.
    • This can be overridden by passing getEmptyObjectValue(object, { path? }) function as an option. By default, it returns null.
• type — (optional) If the value is not going to be a nested object, type should define the type of the value. It will determine how the cell value will be converted to the property value. If no type is specified then the cell value is returned "as is": as a string, number, date or boolean.
  • Valid types:
    • Standard types:
      • String
      • Number
      • Boolean
      • Date
    • One of the "utility" types that're exported from this package:
      • Integer
      • Email
      • URL
    • Custom type:
      • A function that receives a cell value and returns a parsed value. Returning undefined will have same effect as returning null. If the value is invalid, it should throw an error.
  • If the cell value consists of comma-separated values (example: "a, b, c") then type could be specified as [type] for any of the valid types described above.
    • Example: { type: [String] } or { type: [(value) => parseValue(value)] }
    • If the cell value is empty, or if every element of the array is null or undefined, then the array property value is gonna be null by default.
      • This can be overridden by passing getEmptyArrayValue(array, { path }) function as an option. By default, it returns null.

If there're any errors during the conversion of spreadsheet data to JSON objects, the errors property returned from the function will be a non-empty array. Each error object has properties:

• error: string — The error code. Examples: "required", "invalid".
  • If a custom validate() function is defined and it throws a new Error(message) then the error property will be the same as the message value.
  • If a custom type() function is defined and it throws a new Error(message) then the error property will be the same as the message value.
• reason?: string — An optional secondary error code providing more details about the error: "error.error because error.reason". Currently, it's only returned for standard types.
  • Example: { error: "invalid", reason: "not_a_number" } for type: Number means that "the cell value is invalid because it's not a number".
• row: number — The row number in the original file. 1 means the first row, etc.
• column: string — The column title.
• value?: any — The cell value.
• type?: any — The type of the property, as defined in the schema.

Below is an example of using a schema.

// 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 = {
  date: {
    column: 'START DATE',
    type: Date
  },
  numberOfStudents: {
    column: 'NUMBER OF STUDENTS',
    type: Number,
    required: true
  },
  // Nested object example.
  course: {
    schema: {
      isFree: {
        column: 'IS FREE',
        type: Boolean
      },
      title: {
        column: 'COURSE TITLE',
        type: String
      }
    }
    // required: true/false
  },
  contact: {
    column: 'CONTACT',
    required: true,
    // A custom `type` transformation function can be specified.
    // It will transform the cell value if it's not empty.
    type: (value) => {
      const number = parsePhoneNumber(value)
      if (!number) {
        throw new Error('invalid')
      }
      return number
    }
  },
  status: {
    column: 'STATUS',
    type: String,
    oneOf: [
      'SCHEDULED',
      'STARTED',
      'FINISHED'
    ]
  }
}

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

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

Schema: Tips and Features

{
  property: {
    column: 'COLUMN TITLE',
    type: (value) => {
      try {
        return parseValue(value)
      } catch (error) {
        console.error(error)
        throw new Error('invalid')
      }
    }
  }
}

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

function ParseExcelFileErrors({ errors }) {
  return (
    <ul>
      {errors.map((error, i) => (
        <li key={i}>
          <ParseExcelFileError error={error}>
        </li>
      ))}
    </ul>
  )
}

function ParseExcelFileError({ error: errorDetails }) {
  const { type, value, error, reason, row, column } = errorDetails

  // Error summary.
  return (
    <div>
      <code>"{error}"</code>
      {reason && ' '}
      {reason && <code>("{reason}")</code>}
      {' for value '}
      <code>{stringifyValue(value)}</code>
      {' in column '}
      <code>"{column}"</code>
      {' in row '}
      <code>{row}</code>
      {' of spreadsheet'}
    </div>
  )
}

function stringifyValue(value) {
  // Wrap strings in quotes.
  if (typeof value === 'string') {
    return '"' + value + '"'
  }
  return String(value)
}

Fix Spreadsheet Structure When Using Schema

Sometimes, a spreadsheet doesn't have the required structure to read it using a schema. For example, header row might be missing, or there could be some purely presentational / empty / "garbage" rows that should be skipped. To fix that, pass a transformData(data) function as an option. It will transform spreadsheet content before it is parsed with schema. The data argument is an array of rows, each row being an array of cell values.

readXlsxFile(file, {
  schema,
  transformData(data) {
    // Example 1: Add a missing header row.
    return [['ID', 'NAME', ...]].concat(data)
    // Example 2: Remove empty rows.
    return data.filter(row => row.some(cell => cell !== null))
  }
})

Browser Support

An .xlsx file is just a *.zip archive with an *.xslx file extension. This package uses fflate for *.zip decompression. See fflate's browser support for further details.

CDN

To include this library directly via a <script/> tag on a page, one can use any npm CDN service, e.g. unpkg.com or jsdelivr.com

<script src="https://unpkg.com/read-excel-file@5.x/bundle/read-excel-file.min.js"></script>

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

GitHub

On March 9th, 2020, GitHub, Inc. silently banned my account (erasing all my repos, issues and comments, even in my employer's private repos) without any notice or explanation. Because of that, all source codes had to be promptly moved to GitLab. The GitHub repo is now only used as a backup (you can star the repo there too), and the primary repo is now the GitLab one. Issues can be reported in any repo.

License

MIT