XLSX I/O

Cross-platform C library for reading values from and writing values to .xlsx files.

Description

XLSX I/O aims to provide a C library for reading and writing .xlsx files. The .xlsx file format is the native format used by Microsoft(R) Excel(TM) since version 2007.

Goal

The library was written with the following goals in mind:

• written in standard C, but allows being used by C++
• simple interface
• small footprint
• portable across different platforms (Windows, *nix)
• minimal dependancies: only depends on expat (only for reading) and libzip (which in turn depends on zlib)
• separate library for reading and writing .xlsx files

Reading .xlsx files:

• intended to process .xlsx files as a data table, which assumes the following:
  • assumes the first row contains header names
  • assumes the next rows contain values in the same columns as where the header names are supplied
  • only values are processed, anything else is ignored (formulas, layout, graphics, charts, ...)
• the entire shared string table is loaded in memory (warning: could be large for big spreadsheets with a lot of different values)
• supports .xlsx files without shared string table
• worksheet data itself is read on the fly without the need to buffer data in memory
• 2 methods are provided
  • a simple method that allows the application to iterate trough rows and cells
  • an advanced method (with less overhead) which calls callback functions for each cell and after each row

Writing .xlsx files:

• intended for writing data tables as .xlsx files, which assumes the following:
  • only support for writing data (no support for formulas, layout, graphics, charts, ...)
  • no support for multiple worksheets (only one worksheet per file)
• on the fly file generation without the need to buffer data in memory
• no support for shared strings (all values are written as inline strings)

Command Line Utilities

Some command line utilties are included:

• xlsxio_xlsx2csv: converts all sheets in all specified .xlsx files to individual CSV (Comma Separated Values) files.
• xlsxio_csv2xlsx: converts all specified CSV (Comma Separated Values) files to .xlsx files.

Dependancies

This project has the following depencancies:

• libzip (libxlsxio_read and libxlsxio_write)
• expat (only for libxlsxio_read)

License

XLSX I/O is released under the terms of the MIT License (MIT), see LICENSE.txt.