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Add QueryCells to read cell formulas, font colors and number formats - #1020

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@virzak virzak commented Oct 10, 2026 •

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Part of #239

Row queries return only cached values, so callers can't tell whether a value came from a formula, and cell styling is lost. This adds QueryCells/QueryCellsAsync, which yields each stored cell with its formula, font color and number format. Existing queries are unchanged.

await foreach (var cell in importer.QueryCellsAsync(stream, "Sheet1"))
{
    // cell.Reference, RowIndex, ColumnIndex, Value
    // cell.HasFormula, cell.Formula
    // cell.FontColor?.Rgb / Theme / Tint / Indexed / Auto
    // cell.NumberFormat, e.g. "0.0%", or null for General
}
  • Cells that are part of a shared formula report HasFormula = true with Formula = null, since only the anchor cell stores the text.
  • FontColor is a new ExcelColor rather than the System.Drawing.Color used by OpenXmlCellStyle (Add deferred cell style updates #1013), because theme colors and tints can't be represented without resolving the theme.

Tested against a workbook saved by Excel 16 with shared formulas, theme colors with tints and custom number formats.

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • New Features
    • Added asynchronous worksheet cell querying from file paths or streams, with optional sheet selection and cancellation support.
    • Queried cells include references, row and column coordinates, values, formula details, font colors, and number formats. Cells are returned in document order, and cells not stored in the workbook are skipped.
    • Invalid cell positions outside Excel’s supported limits are rejected.
  • Documentation
    • Added guidance on querying cells, supported font-color representations, and how shared formulas and General number formats are reported.

Row queries drop whether a value came from a formula and how the cell is
styled, which callers need when importing hand-edited sheets.
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No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

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Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between ea3a166 and 3544f39.

📒 Files selected for processing: 4
  • src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.cs
  • src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Styles/OpenXmlStyles.cs
  • tests/MiniExcel.OpenXml.Tests/Cells/QueryCellsAsyncTests.cs
  • tests/MiniExcel.OpenXml.Tests/Cells/QueryCellsTests.cs
💤 Files with no reviewable changes: 1
  • tests/MiniExcel.OpenXml.Tests/Cells/QueryCellsTests.cs
🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes: 1
  • src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Styles/OpenXmlStyles.cs

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📝 Walkthrough

The change adds asynchronous APIs to enumerate stored worksheet cells from a path or stream. Returned ExcelCell objects include coordinates, values, formula metadata, font colors, and non-General number formats.

Changes: Worksheet cell queries

Layer / File(s) Summary
Cell and style metadata
src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Models/ExcelCell.cs, src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Styles/OpenXmlStyles.cs
Adds read-only cell and color models. Style parsing records font IDs and font colors, and provides font-color lookup by style.
Worksheet cell parsing
src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs, src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.cs
Adds asynchronous worksheet-cell enumeration and parsing. The reader validates row and column indices, reads formulas and values, and attaches available style metadata.
Importer API and validation
src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Api/OpenXmlImporter.cs, tests/MiniExcel.OpenXml.Tests/Cells/*, README_V2.md, benchmarks/MiniExcel.Benchmarks/BenchmarkSections/QueryExcelBenchmark.cs
Adds path and stream overloads for QueryCellsAsync. Tests cover values, coordinates, formulas, font colors, number formats, named-sheet selection, and invalid cell references. The README documents query results and metadata. A benchmark iterates through queried cells.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Change: Feature

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Caller
  participant OpenXmlImporter
  participant OpenXmlReader
  participant OpenXmlStyles
  Caller->>OpenXmlImporter: QueryCellsAsync(path or stream)
  OpenXmlImporter->>OpenXmlReader: Enumerate selected worksheet cells
  OpenXmlReader->>OpenXmlStyles: Get font color for cell style
  OpenXmlStyles-->>OpenXmlReader: Return font color
  OpenXmlReader-->>OpenXmlImporter: Yield ExcelCell
  OpenXmlImporter-->>Caller: Yield ExcelCell
Loading

Suggested reviewers: michelebastione

Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to 3544f

A malformed worksheet reference can be reported as a different cell location. This is a bounded edge case; resolve or accept it before merging.

Security architecture risk: 🔵 Low · up to 3544f

The new API exposes workbook metadata without evaluating formulas or adding network access. Resource ownership follows existing reader patterns. No introduced security vulnerability was established, but malformed-input behavior and downstream exposure limit assurance.

Retained concerns
No architecture-level concerns identified.

Security review details

Security Blast Radius

  • inferred — The demonstrated attack surface is workbook content processed within the consuming application's process. Font parsing also affects existing consumers of the shared style loader. No new service identity, network privilege, or tenant boundary was identified; deployment-wide and cross-tenant exposure cannot be determined from the library evidence.

Trust Boundaries and Controls

  • observed — Workbook XML remains untrusted input. The cell and style readers use centralized settings with XmlResolver=null. Worksheet relationships are resolved against entries in the current archive rather than dereferenced as external URLs, and formula text is returned as data rather than executed.

Resilience and Maintainability Implications

  • observed — Existing construction helpers do not provide fully failure-atomic resource ownership: a partially constructed disk cache can leave earlier-created files or streams, and archive entry materialization can fail before archive ownership transfers. These helpers are unchanged and already reachable through base query APIs. The outer reader factory still disposes the input stream on creation failure when leaveOpen=false, so an unconditional caller-stream leak is not supported.
Pre-merge checks: Passed 4 · Failed 1

Failed Failed checks: 1 warning

Check name Status Explanation Resolution
Docstring Coverage Warning Docstring coverage is 10.71% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 28 functions across 8 files. Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
Passed Passed checks: 4 passed
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check Passed The title clearly and concisely describes the primary change: adding QueryCells support for reading formulas, font colors, and number formats.
Linked Issues check Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
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@virzak virzak changed the title Add QueryCells to read cell formulas and font colors Add QueryCells to read cell formulas, font colors and number formats Oct 11, 2026
@virzak
virzak marked this pull request as ready for review October 11, 2026 11:48

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Caution

Some comments are outside the diff and can’t be posted inline due to GitHub limitations.

⚠️ Outside diff range comments (1)

🟡 Minor · Reject an explicit out-of-range cell reference before inferring a… · OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs:90-98

src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs:90-98
🎯 Functional Correctness | 🟡 Minor | ⚡ Quick win

Reject an explicit out-of-range cell reference before inferring a column.

TryParseCellReference rejects XFE1 after setting referenceColumn above the worksheet limit. The current fallback then uses nextColumnNumber, so QueryCellsAsync can return the value with a different Reference and ColumnIndex. Match the existing reader behavior and reject the explicit invalid reference.

Suggested fix
         if (CellReferenceConverter.TryParseCellReference(aR, out var referenceColumn, out _))
         {
             columnNumber = referenceColumn;
         }
+        else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(aR) && referenceColumn > CellReferenceConverter.MaxColumnNumber)
+        {
+            throw new InvalidDataException($"Cell reference '{aR}' is invalid.");
+        }
         else if (columnNumber > CellReferenceConverter.MaxColumnNumber)
         {
             throw new InvalidDataException("The worksheet contains more columns than Excel supports.");
         }
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Review comment at @src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs around
lines 90 - 98:
Update the column-selection logic in QueryCellsAsync so a nonempty explicit cell
reference rejected by CellReferenceConverter.TryParseCellReference is also
rejected when referenceColumn exceeds MaxColumnNumber, rather than falling back
to nextColumnNumber. Preserve the existing inferred-column overflow check for
missing or otherwise non-out-of-range references.

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Outside diff comments:
Review comments at @src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs:
- Around line 90-98: Update the column-selection logic in QueryCellsAsync so a
nonempty explicit cell reference rejected by
CellReferenceConverter.TryParseCellReference is also rejected when
referenceColumn exceeds MaxColumnNumber, rather than falling back to
nextColumnNumber. Preserve the existing inferred-column overflow check for
missing or otherwise non-out-of-range references.

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  • README_V2.md

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Actionable comments posted: 1


  • 🪄 Fix CodeRabbit comments on this PR
🤖 Prompt to fix review comments
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only still-valid issues, skip the rest with a brief reason, keep changes
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Inline comments:
Review comments at @src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs:
- Around line 95-98: Update the cell-reference validation branch so every
nonempty aR that fails TryParseCellReference is rejected with
InvalidDataException, regardless of referenceColumn. Keep sequential-column
fallback only when aR is missing.

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  • src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs
  • tests/MiniExcel.OpenXml.Tests/Cells/QueryCellsAsyncTests.cs

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Comment thread src/MiniExcel.OpenXml/Reader/OpenXmlReader.Cells.cs
@michelebastione

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Hello @virzak, thank you for contributing again! I'll have a look at these as soon as I can.

virzak and others added 4 commits October 14, 2026 09:51
Building the string for every cell made QueryCells several times slower
on large sheets.
QueryCells returns one per cell, so a class cost an allocation per cell.
Fixed a typo and a newline, and slightly adjusted the new tests

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