Transferring an excel file through HTTP

[Moray Taylor]

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message news:<l8pX8.154754$Uu2.34782 at sccrnsc03>...
> 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?  ;-)

Are you sure there isn't any FTP going on here, FTP has ASCII and
BINARY transfer systems, if you use the ASCII one on a BINARY file, it
will fry it.

Moray