| commit | author | age | ||
| 2207d6 | 1 | # PHPExcel User Documentation – Reading Spreadsheet Files |
| W | 2 | |
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ## Loading a Spreadsheet File | |
| 5 | ||
| 6 | The simplest way to load a workbook file is to let PHPExcel's IO Factory identify the file type and load it, calling the static load() method of the PHPExcel_IOFactory class. | |
| 7 | ||
| 8 | ```php | |
| 9 | $inputFileName = './sampleData/example1.xls'; | |
| 10 | ||
| 11 | /** Load $inputFileName to a PHPExcel Object **/ | |
| 12 | $objPHPExcel = PHPExcel_IOFactory::load($inputFileName); | |
| 13 | ``` | |
| 14 | > See Examples/Reader/exampleReader01.php for a working example of this code. | |
| 15 | ||
| 16 | The load() method will attempt to identify the file type, and instantiate a loader for that file type; using it to load the file and store the data and any formatting in a PHPExcel object. | |
| 17 | ||
| 18 | The method makes an initial guess at the loader to instantiate based on the file extension; but will test the file before actually executing the load: so if (for example) the file is actually a CSV file or contains HTML markup, but that has been given a .xls extension (quite a common practise), it will reject the Excel5 loader that it would normally use for a .xls file; and test the file using the other loaders until it finds the appropriate loader, and then use that to read the file. | |
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| 20 | While easy to implement in your code, and you don't need to worry about the file type; this isn't the most efficient method to load a file; and it lacks the flexibility to configure the loader in any way before actually reading the file into a PHPExcel object. | |
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