PHPExcel : Parsing XLSX files with X namespace - php

Question

I am using the latest master of PHPExcel (most recent commit March 28th 2015) to parse an xlsx file for a client, the following code reads the file without complaining but finds no data (the only output I currently get is NULL):
<?php
include 'PHPExcel/IOFactory.php';
$inputFileName = 'foo.xlsx';
try {
$objReader = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createReaderForFile($inputFileName);
$objPHPExcel = $objReader->load($inputFileName);
} catch (Exception $e) {
print_r('Error loading file "' . pathinfo($inputFileName,
PATHINFO_BASENAME) . '": ' . $e->getMessage());
}
$sheet = $objPHPExcel->getSheetByName("Orders");
var_dump($sheet);
?>
The workbook definition inside the xlsx file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<x:workbook xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships" xmlns:x="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main">
<x:fileVersion appName="xl" lastEdited="4" lowestEdited="4" rupBuild="4506" />
<x:workbookPr defaultThemeVersion="124226" />
<x:bookViews>
<x:workbookView xWindow="480" yWindow="345" windowWidth="24495" windowHeight="11955" />
</x:bookViews>
<x:sheets>
<x:sheet name="Orders" sheetId="4" r:id="relId4" />
</x:sheets>
<x:calcPr calcId="125725" />
</x:workbook>
I think it's not working out that there's an "Orders" sheet because it's looking for "sheets" in the default namespace rather than the "x" namespace. Sorry if terminology is a bit gibberish there but hopefully you can see what I mean.
There is definitely data there, in that worksheet, because I can open the file in LibreOffice and see it.
Is there a way to get PHPExcel to use the x namespace as the default or in some other way get it to load worksheets defined in this way?
In my quest to find out I found a bug report from 20101 regarding a similar issue which doesn't seem to have been addressed.

Answer 1

This issue is tracked at https://github.com/PHPOffice/PHPExcel/issues/571
What follows is a workaround, it is ugly but may help until this issue has been fixed...
Create a new class PHPExcel_Reader_Excel2007_XNamespace.php:
<?php
class PHPExcel_Reader_Excel2007_XNamespace extends PHPExcel_Reader_Excel2007
{
public function securityScan($xml)
{
$xml = parent::securityScan($xml);
return str_replace(['<x:', '</x:'], ['<', '</'], $xml);
}
}
Then load your excel file using this reader:
$excelReader = new PHPExcel_Reader_Excel2007_XNamespace();
$objPHPExcel = $excelReader->load($inputFileName);
UPDATE: A more general issue for handling of non-standard namespaces has been filed and an updated workaround (covering the "d" namespace as well) is found at https://github.com/PHPOffice/PHPExcel/issues/1187#issuecomment-295032648