Ignore empty cells PHPExcel - php

Question

I'm using the library PHPExcel to read data in an Excel file. The problem I'm having, is that when I use something like:
$obj = PHPExcel_IOFactory::load($file);
$data = $obj->getActiveSheet()->toArray(null,true,true,true);
To load my file and convert its content into an array, I get all the columns and rows of my Excel file in my array even those without any data in them. Is there a method or something in the library PHPExcel to tell it to ignore cells in my Excel sheet that do not contain any data? (Instead of having a bunch of empty associative arrays in my $data)

Answer 1

If your problem is in getting empty columns that go after real data, and you would like to avoid these, you could do something like this:
$maxCell = $sheet->getHighestRowAndColumn();
$data = $sheet->rangeToArray('A1:' . $maxCell['column'] . $maxCell['row']);
This will return array representing only the area containing real data.

Answer 2

I have this solution for my case
$maxCell = $objWorksheet->getHighestRowAndColumn();
$data = $objWorksheet->rangeToArray('A1:' . $maxCell['column'] . $maxCell['row']);
return all rows with all empty string as:
[1] => Array
(
[0] =>
[1] =>
[2] =>
[3] =>
[4] =>
[5] =>
[6] =>
[7] =>
[8] =>
[9] =>
[10] =>
[11] =>
[12] =>
[13] =>
)
To remove these empty rows
$data = array_map('array_filter', $data);
will return
[1] => Array
(
)
And this is the finale solution:
$maxCell = $objWorksheet->getHighestRowAndColumn();
$data = $objWorksheet->rangeToArray('A1:' . $maxCell['column'] . $maxCell['row']);
$data = array_map('array_filter', $data);
$data = array_filter($data);
will return an array with only filled rows .. hope that help

Answer 3

No there isn't. The toArray() method returns the first argument (NULL) to represent an empty cell. You can then apply standard PHP array functions such as array_filter() to eliminate empty cells.
foreach($data as $key => &$row) {
$row = array_filter($row,
function($cell) {
return !is_null($cell);
}
);
if (count($row) == 0) {
unset($data[$key]);
}
}
unset ($row);
This will eliminate every cell that is a NULL (empty) value, and every row that comprises nothing but empty cells. It will preserve the array keys, so your array keys will still give you a cell reference.
Note that an cell containing an empty string is not a null cell, so these will be retained, although the array_filter() callback could be modified to remove them as well.