Transferring an excel file through HTTP

[Emile van Sebille]

Chris
> I have a question about clients (on windows) uploading Excel
> spreadsheets (.xls) to a unix server. These spreadsheets contain
> information that wil be used to store and update a database. I need to
> be able to safely pass the information in the spreadsheet so that I
> can parse it and update accordingly. However, when I upload through my
> web page, the text that once was a nicely formatted excel spreadsheet
> becomes jarbled and illegible. Passing the information (presumably
> through a large string) messes it up understandably as there are text
> format issues and such. I've explored such things as the COM and
> win32com modules but am a little hesitant as my CGI script is not
> operating on a windows platform. I'm using Python 2.2. Can someone
> point me in the right direction? Thanks!
>

The easy answer is to save in excel as tab delimited output and upload
that.

Maybe someone else knows an easy answer to the hard answer?  ;-)

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------