Removed support for importing excel files

[datakick]

Notice: Upcoming version 1.4.0 will no longer support import of Excel files, at least not out of the box.

Why?

Thirty bees uses third party library to read excel files. Currently used library is no longer maintained, and does not run properly on all supported version of PHP (specifically on PHP8). There are alternative libraries that we could use, but those does not run on older supported php versions (php 7.0 and php 7.1).

Because there is not a library that we could use that supports all php versions thirty bees support, we had to remove excel import functionality from the core (together with current library).

But don't worry. Import functionality was extended, and we have introduced ability to register custom importer via module. And we will release new module 'Excel Import Datasource' shortly. 

You will be able to install this module if you run on on PHP 7.2 and newer. With this module installed, the Excel import will be allowed. 

This extension also allows for different data source implementation, for example import from XML files, or from API.

If you are running on php 7.0 or 7.1 -- you should consider updating your PHP version.

[Cassim]

Great idea. Never used the "buildin" as it was not really working.
There are multiple modules out that are working insanly good and way better then the standard 

[datakick]

New module tbspreadsheetdatasource was just released. This module reintroduces removed functionality to import excel files. 

You need to install this module only if you are running on bleeding edge (on soon in 1.4.0) and if you need import from excel files. Import from CSV is still supported natively.

Note that this module required PHP 7.2 and higher. If you are on PHP 7.0 - 7.1, you are out of luck. You could theoretically create similar module that uses phpoffice/phpexcel library underneath. We will not implement such module, since we are already planning phasing out php 7.0 and php 7.1 support in core anyway.

[Joint Systems]

We are on the bleeding edge and before moving from stable we used the excel files 95% of the time under php 7.4,  If we do a search for updates tbspreadsheetsource does not show up?  Do you have to download it from Github?

In the mean time one of our sites we can  no longer get into front or back end,  error message Composer detected issues in your platform: Your Composer dependencies require a PHP version ">= 7.4.0".   I assume someone forgot to choose the php level when switching from stable to BE 14.  How do we fix that?