How to obtain sheet names from XLS files without loading the whole file?

Question

I\'m currently using pandas to read an Excel file and present its sheet names to the user, so he can select which sheet he would like to use. The problem is that the files a

Answer 1

Python code adaptation with full pathlib path filename passed (e.g., ('c:\xml\file.xlsx')). From Dhwanil shah answer, without Django method used to create a temp dir.

import xmltodict
import shutil
import zipfile


def get_sheet_details(filename):
    sheets = []
    # Make a temporary directory with the file name
    directory_to_extract_to = (filename.with_suffix(''))
    directory_to_extract_to.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
    # Extract the xlsx file as it is just a zip file
    zip_ref = zipfile.ZipFile(filename, 'r')
    zip_ref.extractall(directory_to_extract_to)
    zip_ref.close()
    # Open the workbook.xml which is very light and only has meta data, get sheets from it
    path_to_workbook = directory_to_extract_to / 'xl' / 'workbook.xml'
    with open(path_to_workbook, 'r') as f:
        xml = f.read()
        dictionary = xmltodict.parse(xml)
        for sheet in dictionary['workbook']['sheets']['sheet']:
            sheet_details = {
                'id': sheet['@sheetId'],  # can be sheetId for some versions
                'name': sheet['@name']  # can be name
            }
            sheets.append(sheet_details)
    # Delete the extracted files directory
    shutil.rmtree(directory_to_extract_to)
    return sheets