Array contains one more value

[danyderigon]

PHP: 7.4
Laravel: 8.83
Laravel-Excel: 3.1

Hello.

I am currently testing the import, but when I "dd" my array; I have a rather strange extra value.
I don't want to have it

This is my Excel :

test.xlsx

This my TestImport.php

<?php

namespace App\Imports;

use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\Importable;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\ToCollection;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\WithHeadingRow;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\WithValidation;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Imports\HeadingRowFormatter;

class TestImport extends HeadingRowFormatter implements ToCollection, WithValidation, WithHeadingRow
{

    use Importable;

    public function collection(Collection $collection)
    {
        return $collection;
    }

    public function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            '*.A' => ['string'],
            '*.B' => ['string'],
            '*.C' => ['string'],
            '*.D' => ['string']
        ];

    }
}

This my controller who called the import :

$import = new TestImport();
$array = $import->toArray($full_path, env('STORAGE_DISK'), Excel::XLSX);
dd($array);

And this is the "dd" :

Why did I : 4 => null

It is constraining because in order to preview the file, I would like to make a foreach of the values. However, I have an extra value that I am not interested in.

Do you know why ? 😢

[patrickbrouwers]

When you don't use WithMultipleSheets, you get all sheets. So the first array is the array of sheets

[danyderigon]

Well, this is not the problem.

My problem is in the array of cells where there is an extra column. 4 => null

[MartienB]

I'm facing this same issue with some of my imports. My first solutions was to pop() the last object in the array but I've found out that some .xlsx imports don't have this extra value so this isn't a good solution.

I hope someone can explain whats going on!

[patrickbrouwers]

If not using WithMultipleSheets it will always be a nested array

[MartienB]

@patrickbrouwers Thank you for your reply! I understand that WithMultipleSheets has influence on array nesting, but does it have anything to do with the extra value (I guess the array count) which is added as the last value in the array, in this case 4 => null?

[patrickbrouwers]

Probably an empty row inside the Excel file. You can skip empty rows with the SkipsEmptyRows concern

[MartienB]

@patrickbrouwers I've just tried it with the SkipsEmptyRows concern, when I use the by @danyderigon provided test.xlsx I still get an extra column called '4'. Do have any other ideas?

[patrickbrouwers]

Sorry, I thought you meant rows. The file contains an empty column.

<cols>
        <col min="1" max="4" width="16.3516" style="1" customWidth="1"/>
        <col min="5" max="16384" width="16.3516" style="1" customWidth="1"/>
    </cols>

I don't think there's anyway to ignore empty columns. Just remove or ignore the column yourself when processing.