ENH: read_excel (xlrd engine) add parameter for ignore_workbook_corruption

[aster94]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

yes, sometimes, expecially when created by 3rd party application old excel file can be corrupted:

https://www.codeforests.com/2020/05/28/fix-the-compdocerror-for-xlrd/
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12705527/reading-excel-files-with-xlrd
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34550624/python-xlrd-read-excel-file-error/
https://titanwolf.org/Network/Articles/Article?AID=f1370e16-c9ef-4892-a00e-b1bafee2f6a8#gsc.tab=0

Describe the solution you'd like

xlrd's team recently in version 2.0 (december 2020) solved this with a flag: ignore_workbook_corruption, please see https://xlrd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changes.html
So my desire would be to just have this flag inside the pandas's function read_excel

API breaking implications

any, I guess

Describe alternatives you've considered

Open the file directly with xlrd and pass it to pandas
I may be unaware of other solutions

[ahawryluk]

Since it's an issue unique to XLS files, would ignore_xls_corruption be an appropriate name?

[aster94]

Yes, as you know xlrd dropped support to all formats, except xls. So in my opinion it's an appropriate name

Edit: just thinking, maybe also openpyxl and odf have a flag to ignore corrupted files? If yes maybe a more general name could be used

Edit 2: openpyxl seems to not support such a flag, I am not sure but I didn't found anything similar also in odfpy. So yes, ignore_xls_corruption is a nice name

[rmhowe425]

take

[rmhowe425]

@rhshadrach Is this issue okay to pick up and implement?

[rhshadrach]

I'm generally negative on adding engine-specific keywords.

pandas calls open_workbook of xlrd. I think we should add engine_kwargs to read_excel. This is an argument that many other pandas methods enjoy. This would enable the user to pass arguments to engines as they see fit without us having to modify the signature of read_excel for each engine.

This would require:

• Enabling engine_kwargs for all readers
• Documenting which method of each engine pandas uses to read an Excel file so that users can find which arguments can be passed through to the engine.

[rmhowe425]

@rhshadrach Okay! I can do that if that's the official route that we want to take for this issue!

[rhshadrach]

cc @phofl for any thoughts

[phofl]

agree with @rhshadrach

An engine specific kwarg is not a great idea, engine_kwargs makes more sense

[rhshadrach]

@rmhowe425 - I think we have a good way forward. Please go ahead with this if you're still interested!