php - How to retrieve date from table cell using PhpSpreadsheet?

Question

I have xlsx tables and I use PhpSpreadsheet to parse them. Some cells are formatted as date. The problem is that PhpSpreadsheet returns the values from date-formatted cells in an unspecified format:

// What it looks in excel: 2017.04.08 0:00
$value = $worksheet->getCell('A1')->getValue();  // 42833 - doesn't look like a UNIX time

How to get the date from a cell in form of a UNIX time or a DateTimeInterface instance?

Answer 1

The value is amount of days passed since 1900. You can use the PhpSpreadsheet built-in functions to convert it to a unix timestamp:

$value = $worksheet->getCell('A1')->getValue();
$date = PhpOfficePhpSpreadsheetSharedDate::excelToTimestamp($value);

Or to a PHP DateTime object:

$value = $worksheet->getCell('A1')->getValue();
$date = PhpOfficePhpSpreadsheetSharedDate::excelToDateTimeObject($value);