php-excel-reader - problem with UTF-8

Question

Hi, I'm using php-excel-reader 2.21 for converting XLS file to CSV. I wrote a simple script to do that, but I have some problems with unicode characters. It does not return values from some cells.

For example it doesn't have problems with cell content ceník položek but have problems with nákup, VÝROBCE, PÁS, HRUBÝ,NÁKLADNÍ and some others. In these cells it returns empty value ("").

Here is the code snippet I use for conversion:

<?php    
set_time_limit(120);    
require_once 'excel_reader2.php';    
$data = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader("cenik.xls", false, 'UTF-8');    

$f = fopen('file.csv', 'w');    
for($row = 1; $row <= $data->rowcount(); $row++)    
{    
    $out = '';    
    for($col = 1; $col <= $data->colcount(); $col++)    
    {    
        $val = $data->val($row,$col);

        // escape " and \ characters inside the cell    
        $escaped = preg_replace(array('#”#u', '#\\\\#u', '#[”"]#u'), array('"', '\\\\\\\\', '\"'), $val);    
        if(empty($val))    
            $out .= ',';    
        else    
            $out .= '"' . $escaped . '",';    
    }
    // remove last comma (,)    
    fwrite($f, substr($out, 0, -1));    
    fwrite($f, "\n");
}
fclose($f);

?>

Note that the cell and row indexes starts from 1. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I hope it's the same problem as I had: In excel_reader2.php on line 1120, replace

$retstr = ($asciiEncoding) ? $retstr : $this->_encodeUTF16($retstr);

with

$retstr = ($asciiEncoding) ? iconv('cp1250', 'utf-8', $retstr) : $this->_encodeUTF16($retstr);

That should fix it, however I suggest you use a different excel reader, such as PHPExcel to avoid problems like these.
Note that you need iconv extension enabled on the server.