Converting .xls to .txt using LAMP

...so I can dump the data into mysql

[Robber]

Hi,

Now before we start, the easiest way do to this is to just open the .xls in Excel then save as as .txt (tab delimited). But on this particular occassion, I can't do that as I want this to be an automated cron process, I am however trying to get the source file dumped straight into .txt rather than .xls.

So in the meantime I found a project on sourceforge that will let me load an xls into php arrays. Thats pretty neat, exactly what I needed.

But! The xls I need to read is 30-35mb. Now since the php memory_limit directive is set to 8M the script won't work.

I dont want to change the value in php.ini as this is on a live web server and that could be a hazard.

I dont want to just temporarily change the php.ini because I am going to be doing this conversion in a scheduled cron.

I had thought there would be a function such as set_time_limit but for mem usage so I could change it just for the duration of the scripts execution, but there isn't!

So, anyone got a good way round this?

Cheers

[Birdman]

You can probably read the file in chunks to get around the mem limit.

Check out the sixth user comment on this page:

[us2.php.net...]

[Robber]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that but I would have thought the .xls class will need to have the whole file loaded into memory before it can do anything, but I'll have a go.

Cheers

[baze22]

Is there any way you can do it in chunks and loop through the file? Just read x rows at a time, write them to a file and repeat until eof.

baze

[baze22]

Just noticed - 2 replies while I was doing my previous post (and in 2 different threads no less) - I've gotta hit submit quicker. :)

The function as written may have you read the whole file at once, but maybe you could modify it to do chunks.

baze

[lazydog]

How about another installation of php on the same server with a different php.ini?
Having said that, if you are using php-cli to process the excel files, then you can configure php-cli to use a diff. ini.

Hope that helps.