Excel, CSV & JSON to PHP Array Converter

What does this PHP array converter do?

It turns tabular data or JSON into a PHP array literal you can paste into source code. That is useful for configuration files that return an array, database seeders, unit-test fixtures, lookup tables (countries, currencies, product SKUs) and WordPress or Laravel code that ships with static data.

<?php

$data = [
    [
        'id' => 1,
        'name' => 'Ada Lovelace',
        'active' => true,
    ],
];

Array shapes

When the input is JSON, Keep original JSON structure converts it as-is — nested objects become nested associative arrays, exactly like json_decode($json, true) would produce.

Escaping and types

• Strings use single quotes, the fastest and safest PHP string form: only \ and ' need escaping, and $variables are never interpolated.
• Numbers, true/false and null are written as PHP literals, not strings.
• Values with leading zeros ("007") stay strings so nothing is lost.

Short [] vs array()

The short array syntax [] has been available since PHP 5.4 and is the standard in PSR-12 and modern frameworks. Choose array() only for very old codebases or coding standards that still require it. Trailing commas after the last element are valid in all PHP versions and keep diffs clean.

Need the same data for front-end code? Use CSV to JavaScript array. Going to a database instead? Try CSV & Excel to SQL.

Tools that pair well with the Excel, CSV & JSON to PHP Array

• Excel to JSON — Open an .xlsx workbook or paste cells straight from Excel or Google Sheets and get clean JSON.
• JSON to Excel — Turn a JSON array into a real Excel workbook.
• JSON to SQL — Paste a JSON array and get SQL that creates the table and inserts every object as a row — nested objects become columns or JSON values, and every string is escaped for your dialect.
• SQL to JSON, CSV & Excel — Paste a SQL dump or a few INSERT statements and get the rows back as JSON, CSV or an Excel workbook with one sheet per table.