Processing Excel XML files with Perl and LibXML

I’m trying to process data in an Excel file saved as an XML spreadsheet. After doing a fair amount of research (I’ve not done much XML processing before) I still couldn’t make it work. Here is the content of my minimal file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
 xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
 xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
 xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
 xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"
 xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions"
 xmlns:sbmextension="http://www.serena.com/SBM/XSLT_Extension">
 <Worksheet ss:Name="index">
 </Worksheet>
</Workbook>

And my script:

use XML::LibXML;
use Data::Dumper;
my $filename = $ARGV[0];
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc    = $parser->parse_file($filename);
my $xc = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new( $doc->documentElement );
my $xpath = '/Workbook/Worksheet/@ss:Name';

print Dumper $xc->findvalue($xpath);

However, if I remove (the default namespace?) xmlns=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet” then it starts working. Please can you tell me what I’m missing? I guess I could just remove it before parsing the document but I would like to understand what I’ve done wrong :). Thanks in advance.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

use XML::LibXML;
use Data::Dumper;

my $xml = << '__XML__';
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
<Workbook
   xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
 xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
 xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
 xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
 xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"
 xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions"
 xmlns:sbmextension="http://www.serena.com/SBM/XSLT_Extension">
 <Worksheet ss:Name="index">
 </Worksheet>
</Workbook>
__XML__

my $doc = XML::LibXML->load_xml( string => $xml);
my $xc  = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new( $doc->documentElement );
$xc->registerNs('ss', 'urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet');
my $xpath = '/ss:Workbook/ss:Worksheet/@ss:Name';

print Dumper $xc->findvalue($xpath);

Tags: excel, file, perl, xmlxml