Spreadsheet format files are the lingua franca of data processing. CSV, Tab, XLS, XSLX and ODS files are used widely. Python's csv module and the XLRD project (http://www.lexicon.net/sjmachin/xlrd.htm) help us handle spreadsheet files.

By themselves, however, they aren't a very complete solution.

The Stingray Schema-Based File Reader offers several features to help process files in spreadsheet formats.

1. It wraps csv, xlrd, plus several XML parsers into a single, unified "workbook" structure to make applications that work with any of the common physical formats.
2. It extends the workbook to include fixed format files (with no delimiters) and even COBOL files in EBCDIC.
3. It provides a uniform way to load and use schema information. This can be header rows in the individual sheets of a workbook, or it can be separate schema information.
4. It provides a suite of data conversions that cover the most common cases.

Additionally, stringray provides some guidance on how to structure file-processing applications so that they are testable and composable.

Stingray 4.4.7 requires Python 3.3, preferably 3.4.

It depends on this project to read .XLS files:

• xlrd. http://www.lexicon.net/sjmachin/xlrd.htm

If you want to build from scratch and create documentation, you'll need these other two projects:

• PyLit3. https://github.com/slott56/PyLit-3
• Sphinx. http://sphinx.pocoo.org/

Since Stingray is a Literate Programming project, the documentation is also the source. And vice-versa.

http://stingrayreader.sourceforge.net/index.html

http://sourceforge.net/projects/stingrayreader/files/stingray.pdf

https://sourceforge.net/p/stingrayreader/code/

Here's the license for using Stingray

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/