numbers-parser 1.1

Package to read data from Apple Numbers spreadsheets

numbers-parser

numbers-parser is a Python module for parsing Apple Numbers .numbers files. It supports Numbers files generated by Numbers version 10.3 and 11.0 (current as of May 2021).

It supports and is tested against Python versions from 3.5 onwards. It is not compatible with earlier versions of Python.

Currently supported features of Numbers files are:

• Multiple sheets per document
• Multiple tables per sheet
• Text, numeric, date, currency, duration, percentage cell types

Formulas have very limited support and rely wholly on Numbers saving values in cells as part of the saved document, which is not always guaranteed. When a formula value is not present, the value *FORMULA* is returned. Any formula that results in a Numbers error returns a value *ERROR*.

Installation

python3 -m pip install numbers-parser

Usage

Reading documents:

doc = Document("my-spreasdsheet.numbers")
sheets = doc.sheets()
tables = sheets[0].tables()
data = tables[0].data

Referring to sheets and tables

Both sheets and names can be accessed from lists of these objects using an integer index (list syntax) and using the name of the sheet/table (dict syntax):

# list access method
sheet_1 = doc.sheets()[0]
print("Opened sheet", sheet_1.name)

# dict access method
table_1 = sheets["Table 1"]
print("Opened table", table_1.name)

Accessing data

Table objects have a data property which contains a nested list with an entry for each row of the table. Each row is itself a list of the column values. Empty cells in Numbers are returned as None values.

table_data = sheets["Table 1"].data
print("Cell A1 contains", data[0][0])
print("Cell C2 contains", data[2][1])

Cell references

In addition to extracting all data at once, individual cells can be referred to as methods

doc = Document("my-spreasdsheet.numbers")
sheets = doc.sheets()
tables = sheets["Sheet 1"].tables()
table = tables["Table 1"]

# row, column syntax
print("Cell A1 contains", table.cell(0, 0))
# Excel/Numbers-style cell references
print("Cell C2 contains", table.cell("C2"))

Numbers File Formats

Numbers uses a proprietary, compressed binary format to store its tables. This format is comprised of a zip file containing images, as well as Snappy-compressed Protobuf .iwa files containing metadata, text, and all other definitions used in the spreadsheet.

Protobuf updates

As numbers-parser includes private Protobuf definitions extracted from a copy of Numbers, new versions of Numbers will inevitably create .numbers files that cannot be read by numbers-parser. As new versions of Numbers are released, the following steps must be undertaken:

• Run proto-dump on the new copy of Numbers to dump new Proto files.
  • proto-dump assumes version 2.5.0 of Google Protobuf which may need changes to build on more modern OSes. The version linked here is maintained by the author and tested on recent macOS for both arm64 and x86_64 architectures.
  • Any . characters in the Protobuf definitions must be changed to _ characters manually, or via the rename_proto_files.py script in the protos directory of this repo.
• Connect to a running copy of Numbers with lldb (or any other debugger) and manually copy and reformat the results of po [TSPRegistry sharedRegistry] into mapping.py.
  • Versions of macOS >= 10.11 may protect Numbers from being attached to by a debugger - to attach, temporarily disable System IntegrityProtection to get this data.
  • The generate_mapping.py script in protos should help turn the output from this step into a recreation of mapping.py

Running make bootstrap will perform all of these steps and generate the Python protos files as well as mapping.py. The makefile assumes that proto-dump is in a repo parallel to this one, but the make variable PROTO_DUMP can be overridden to pass the path to a working version of proto-dump.

Credits

numbers-parser was built by Jon Connell but derived enormously from prior work by Peter Sobot. Both modules are derived from previous work by Sean Patrick O'Brien.

Decoding the data structures inside Numbers files was helped greatly by previous work by Steven Lott.

License

All code in this repository is licensed under the MIT License.

Copyright 2021 Jon Connell
Copyright 2019-2020 Peter Sobot

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software
and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,
sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or
substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM,
DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.