This is a great, simple and lovely module for Node.js to parse Excel files.

Install the module:

npm install --save excel

Use it like this:

var xls = require('excel');

xls('Sheet.xlsx', function(err, data) {
  if(err) throw err;
    // data is an array of arrays
});

As it says, the data it returns is an array of arrays. We want it to be JSON, so that we can do whatever we want with it.

This is a function that converts an array of arrays to JSON:

function convertToJSON(array) {
  var first = array[0].join()
  var headers = first.split(',');
  
  var jsonData = [];
  for ( var i = 1, length = array.length; i < length; i++ )
  {
   
    var myRow = array[i].join();
    var row = myRow.split(',');
    
    var data = {};
    for ( var x = 0; x < row.length; x++ )
    {
      data[headers[x]] = row[x];
    }
    jsonData.push(data);

  }
  return jsonData;
};

Then:

xlsx('tasks.xlsx', function(err,data) {
    if(err) throw err;
    //console.log(jsonDataArray(data));
    console.log(JSON.stringify(convertToJSON(data)));
    //console.log(data);
});

It's almost embarrassing how Node enables me to use other people's modules to create apps in such a simple way.