Reading an Excel file in PHP

Question

I'm trying to read an Excel file (Office 2003). There is an Excel file that needs to be uploaded and its contents parsed.

Via Google, I can only find answers to these related (and insufficient topics): generating Excel files, reading Excel XML files, reading Excel CSV files, or incomplete abandoned projects. I own Office 2003 so if I need any files from there, they are available. It's installed on my box but isn't and can't be installed on my shared host.

Edit: so far all answers point to PHP-ExcelReader and/or this additional article about how to use it.

Answer 1

Try this...

I have used following code to read "xls and xlsx"

    <?php
    include 'excel_reader.php';       // include the class
    $excel = new PhpExcelReader;      // creates object instance of the class
    $excel->read('excel_file.xls');   // reads and stores the excel file data

    // Test to see the excel data stored in $sheets property
    echo '<pre>';
    var_export($excel->sheets);

    echo '</pre>';

    or 

 echo '<pre>';
    print_r($excel->sheets);

    echo '</pre>';

Reference:http://coursesweb.net/php-mysql/read-excel-file-data-php_pc