What are the challenges of importing a .xls file into a MySQL table using PHP?

One challenge of importing a .xls file into a MySQL table using PHP is that PHP does not have native support for reading Excel files. To solve this, you can use a library like PHPExcel to read the .xls file and then insert the data into the MySQL table.

<?php

require 'PHPExcel/Classes/PHPExcel.php';

$inputFileName = 'example.xls';

$objPHPExcel = PHPExcel_IOFactory::load($inputFileName);
$sheet = $objPHPExcel->getSheet(0);
$highestRow = $sheet->getHighestRow();
$highestColumn = $sheet->getHighestColumn();

$connection = new mysqli('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'database');

for ($row = 1; $row <= $highestRow; $row++) {
    $rowData = $sheet->rangeToArray('A' . $row . ':' . $highestColumn . $row, NULL, TRUE, FALSE);
    
    $sql = "INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2, column3) VALUES ('" . $rowData[0][0] . "', '" . $rowData[0][1] . "', '" . $rowData[0][2] . "')";
    $connection->query($sql);
}

$connection->close();

?>