What are the best practices for handling date and percentage data in PHP when extracting information from Excel files?

When extracting date and percentage data from Excel files in PHP, it is important to properly format and handle these types of data to ensure accuracy and consistency. For dates, it is recommended to use PHP's DateTime class to parse and format the date values. For percentages, it is advisable to convert them to decimal values for calculations and comparisons.

// Example code for handling date and percentage data from Excel files in PHP

// Load the Excel file using a library like PhpSpreadsheet
$spreadsheet = \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\IOFactory::load('example.xlsx');

// Get the worksheet
$worksheet = $spreadsheet->getActiveSheet();

// Iterate through the rows to extract date and percentage data
foreach ($worksheet->getRowIterator() as $row) {
    $cellValue = $worksheet->getCell('A1')->getValue(); // Assuming date is in column A and percentage is in column B

    // Handling date data
    $date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d', $cellValue);
    $formattedDate = $date->format('Y-m-d'); // Format the date as needed

    // Handling percentage data
    $percentage = (float) $worksheet->getCell('B1')->getValue() / 100; // Convert percentage to decimal
}