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Excel to XML conversion

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Introduction

This sample describes a context translation program designed to convert non-XML files to XML; in particular, it converts the content of an Excel spreadsheet (XLS) to XML.

The conversion is done in two steps:

• The spreadsheet is opened in Excel, then saved as a tab-delimited text file. Using Excel to convert the file to this format eliminates the need to decipher the structure of an Excel binary file and greatly reduces the complexity of the OmniMark program needed to convert the file to XML.
• The program converts the tab-delimited text file to XML.

The first step in any conversion is to analyze the structure of the input file. You can do this either manually (by "eyeballing" the input file) or by designing an OmniMark program to perform this task. Since the input file in this sample is very simple, a manual approach makes the most sense. The following figure shows the original XLS spreadsheet:

Fig 1. Excel spreadsheet source file

The sample spreadsheet has the following basic structure:

• a title
• a list of information (name, start date, end date)
• a table
• a second title, followed by pairs of numbers and names

The resulting XML file includes main elements that reflect this structure:

• title
• ulist (unordered list of single items)
• table
• dl (list of paired items)