Is binary identical output possible with XlsxWriter?

Question

With the same input is it possible to make the output binary identical using XlsxWriter?

I tried changing the created property to the same date and that helped a little. Still get a lot of differences in sharedStrings.xml.

Thanks

Answer 1

Yes for identical input, if you set the created date in the worksheet properties:

import xlsxwriter
import datetime

for filename in ('hello1.xlsx', 'hello2.xlsx'):
    workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(filename)
    workbook.set_properties({'created': datetime.date(2016, 4, 25)})

    worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()
    worksheet.write('A1', 'Hello world')
    workbook.close()

Then:

$ cmp hello1.xlsx hello2.xlsx

# No output. Files are the same.

The order in which strings are added to the file will change the layout of the sharedStrings table and thus lead to non-identical files. That is generally the case with Excel as well.

Note: This requires XlsxWriter version 1.0.4 or later to work.