pyexcel-xls is a tiny wrapper library to read, manipulate and write data in xls format and it can read xlsx and xlsm fromat. You are likely to use it with pyexcel.

Fonts, colors and charts are not supported.

Recently, pyexcel(0.2.2+) and its plugins(0.2.0+) started using newer version of setuptools. Please upgrade your setup tools before install latest pyexcel components:

$ pip install --upgrade setuptools

You can install it via pip:

$ pip install pyexcel-xls

or clone it and install it:

$ git clone http://github.com/pyexcel/pyexcel-xls.git
$ cd pyexcel-xls
$ python setup.py install

Here's the sample code to write a dictionary to an xls file:

>>> from pyexcel_xls import save_data
>>> data = OrderedDict() # from collections import OrderedDict
>>> data.update({"Sheet 1": [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]})
>>> data.update({"Sheet 2": [["row 1", "row 2", "row 3"]]})
>>> save_data("your_file.xls", data)

Here's the sample code:

>>> from pyexcel_xls import get_data
>>> data = get_data("your_file.xls")
>>> import json
>>> print(json.dumps(data))
{"Sheet 1": [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]], "Sheet 2": [["row 1", "row 2", "row 3"]]}

Here's the sample code to write a dictionary to an xls file:

>>> from pyexcel_xls import save_data
>>> data = OrderedDict()
>>> data.update({"Sheet 1": [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]})
>>> data.update({"Sheet 2": [[7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12]]})
>>> io = StringIO()
>>> save_data(io, data)
>>> # do something with the io
>>> # In reality, you might give it to your http response
>>> # object for downloading

Continue from previous example:

>>> # This is just an illustration
>>> # In reality, you might deal with xls file upload
>>> # where you will read from requests.FILES['YOUR_XLS_FILE']
>>> data = get_data(io)
>>> print(json.dumps(data))
{"Sheet 1": [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]], "Sheet 2": [[7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12]]}

No longer, explicit import is needed since pyexcel version 0.2.2. Instead, this library is auto-loaded. So if you want to read data in xls format, installing it is enough.

Any version under pyexcel 0.2.2, you have to keep doing the following:

Import it in your file to enable this plugin:

from pyexcel.ext import xls

Please note only pyexcel version 0.0.4+ support this.

Here is the sample code:

>>> import pyexcel as pe
>>> # from pyexcel.ext import xls
>>> sheet = pe.get_book(file_name="your_file.xls")
>>> sheet
Sheet 1:
+---+---+---+
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
+---+---+---+
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
+---+---+---+
Sheet 2:
+-------+-------+-------+
| row 1 | row 2 | row 3 |
+-------+-------+-------+

Here is the sample code:

>>> sheet.save_as("another_file.xls")

You got to wrap the binary content with stream to get xls working:

>>> # This is just an illustration
>>> # In reality, you might deal with xls file upload
>>> # where you will read from requests.FILES['YOUR_XLS_FILE']
>>> xlsfile = "another_file.xls"
>>> with open(xlsfile, "rb") as f:
...     content = f.read()
...     r = pe.get_book(file_type="xls", file_content=content)
...     print(r)
...
Sheet 1:
+---+---+---+
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
+---+---+---+
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
+---+---+---+
Sheet 2:
+-------+-------+-------+
| row 1 | row 2 | row 3 |
+-------+-------+-------+

You need to pass a StringIO instance to Writer:

>>> data = [
...     [1, 2, 3],
...     [4, 5, 6]
... ]
>>> io = StringIO()
>>> sheet = pe.Sheet(data)
>>> io = sheet.save_to_memory("xls", io)
>>> # then do something with io
>>> # In reality, you might give it to your http response
>>> # object for downloading

New BSD License

Development steps for code changes

1. git clone https://github.com/pyexcel/pyexcel-xls.git
2. cd pyexcel-xls
3. pip install -r rnd_requirements.txt # if such a file exists
4. pip install -r requirements.txt
5. pip install -r tests/requirements.txt

In order to update test envrionment, and documentation, additional setps are required:

1. pip install moban
2. git clone https://github.com/pyexcel/pyexcel-commons.git
3. make your changes in .moban.d directory, then issue command moban

Usually, it is created when a depdent library is not released. Once the dependecy is installed(will be released), the future version of the dependency in the requirements.txt will be valid.

Many information that are shared across pyexcel projects, such as: this developer guide, license info, etc. are stored in pyexcel-commons project.

.moban.d stores the specific meta data for the library.

Although nose and doctest are both used in code testing, it is adviable that unit tests are put in tests. doctest is incorporated only to make sure the code examples in documentation remain valid across different development releases.

On Linux/Unix systems, please launch your tests like this:

$ make test

On Windows systems, please issue this command:

> test.bat

• If a zero was typed in a DATE formatted field in xls, you will get "01/01/1900".
• If a zero was typed in a TIME formatted field in xls, you will get "00:00:00".