PHPSpreadsheet - Read Excel (.xlsx) File To Array

Clients often prefer to send me Excel .xlsx files that are basically just CSV files. E.g. there is just one sheet and it's simply a table of data starting from A0. In such circumstances, one can manually convert them to CSV format, or one can have PhpSpreadsheet read them directly as-is. This tutorial will show you how to do the latter.

Steps

Below is an commented example of how to read a .xlsx spreadsheet that does better to explain than I could do with words.

<?php

// include the autoloader, so we can use PhpSpreadsheet
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

# Create a new Xls Reader
$reader = new \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Reader\Xlsx();

// Tell the reader to only read the data. Ignore formatting etc.
$reader->setReadDataOnly(true);

// Read the spreadsheet file.
$spreadsheet = $reader->load(__DIR__ . '/path/to/file.xlsx');

$sheet = $spreadsheet->getSheet($spreadsheet->getFirstSheetIndex());
$data = $sheet->toArray();

// output the data to the console, so you can see what there is.
die(print_r($data, true)); 

With the following example file, you get the following output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => ID
            [1] => Circumstance
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
            [1] => Metal-Detecting
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2
            [1] => Chance find
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => 3
            [1] => Fieldwalking
        )

    [4] => Array
        (
            [0] => 4
            [1] => Mudlarking
        )

    [5] => Array
        (
            [0] => 5
            [1] => Gardening
        )

    [6] => Array
        (
            [0] => 6
            [1] => Other chance find
        )

    [7] => Array
        (
            [0] => 7
            [1] => Archaeological investigation
        )

    [8] => Array
        (
            [0] => 8
            [1] => Construction
        )

    [9] => Array
        (
            [0] => 9
            [1] => Agriculture or drainage work
        )

    [10] => Array
        (
            [0] => 10
            [1] => Investigation of shipwreck
        )

    [11] => Array
        (
            [0] => 11
            [1] => Unknown
        )

)

However, I found that if I opened the spreadsheet (in LibreOffice), and pressed Ctrl + A to select all cells, and then manually set the font to Arial, I generated the following bad example that would consider every cell to having an empty value. This suggests to me that the $reader->setReadDataOnly(true); doesn't quite cover me. If you know of a change that will resolve this, then please paste a solution in the comments.