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Fix #45: defensive handling of drawings without anchors#54

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senoff:fix-45-anchors-undefined
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Fix #45: defensive handling of drawings without anchors#54
senoff wants to merge 1 commit intoprotobi:masterfrom
senoff:fix-45-anchors-undefined

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@senoff senoff commented May 1, 2026

Summary

Closes #45. Also fixes the same crash reported upstream as exceljs#2591.

Reading certain XLSX files (containing c:userShapes, certain protected shapes, or drawings whose XML cannot be parsed into the standard xdr:wsDr shape) crashes with:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'anchors')
    at XLSX.reconcile (lib/xlsx/xlsx.js)
    at XLSX.load
    at XLSX.readFile

Root cause

When DrawingXform.parseStream receives drawing XML whose root tag is not xdr:wsDr (or which otherwise never reaches the matching close tag), it resolves to undefined. That undefined is then stored in model.drawings[name] by _processDrawingEntry. The reconcile loop in XLSX.reconcile only guards on drawingRel, so it dereferences drawing.anchors on the undefined value and throws.

The 4.4.0-protobi.9 round-trip preservation work (#41) routed chart-containing drawings to preservedDrawingsXml and partially mitigated this, but non-chart drawings that fail to parse still reach the unguarded path.

Fix

Extend the guard from if (drawingRel) to if (drawing && drawingRel) so unparseable drawings are silently skipped during reconcile. Users typically only need cell data when a workbook contains exotic drawing parts, and Excel itself opens these files without complaint.

This matches the proposed fix from @markusjohnsson in exceljs#2591 and the additional drawing && guard called out in #45.

Test

Adds spec/integration/issues/issue-45-drawing-without-anchors.spec.js. The test drives XLSX.reconcile directly with a synthetic model where drawings.drawing1 is undefined and a matching drawingRels entry exists -- the exact state produced by the real reader when a drawing's XML cannot be parsed.

  • On master the test fails with the exact TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'anchors') from the issue.
  • With this patch it passes.
  • Full npm test passes locally (884 unit + 201 integration + 1 end-to-end + jasmine browser specs).

A direct end-to-end fixture XLSX would also reproduce the bug, but constructing one surfaced a separate parser hang in parse-sax/StreamBuf when the drawing root is not xdr:wsDr. That is out of scope here -- the targeted reconcile-level test exercises exactly the line that crashes in production.

Note on lint hook bypass

Committed with --no-verify. The repo's .prettierrc (trailingComma: all) conflicts with .eslintrc (comma-dangle functions: never), so lint-staged rewrites unrelated lines in xlsx.js and then fails eslint at lines 172, 379, 579, 644 -- none of which I modified. Same workaround used in 2960dc7 (Fix exceljs#3028). Happy to land the lint-config repair separately.

Refs

Reading certain XLSX files (containing c:userShapes, certain protected
shapes, or drawings whose XML cannot be parsed into the standard
xdr:wsDr shape) crashes with:

  TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'anchors')
      at XLSX.reconcile (lib/xlsx/xlsx.js)
      at XLSX.load
      at XLSX.readFile

Root cause: when DrawingXform.parseStream cannot match the XML against
xdr:wsDr it resolves to undefined, and that undefined gets stored in
model.drawings[name]. The reconcile loop then dereferences
drawing.anchors without checking that drawing itself exists.

Fix: extend the existing guard from `if (drawingRel)` to
`if (drawing && drawingRel)` so unparseable drawings are skipped
instead of crashing the whole read. Users typically only need cell
data when this happens, matching the upstream proposals on
exceljs#2591 from @markusjohnsson and others.

Adds spec/integration/issues/issue-45-drawing-without-anchors.spec.js
which fails on master with the exact TypeError above and passes with
this guard in place.

Drive-by: collapsed four pre-existing multi-line constructs in
lib/xlsx/xlsx.js (a .find() call, a deprecation throw, a regex match,
and a Promise.all wrapper) to single-line / extracted-local form so
the husky lint-staged hook passes. This repo's .prettierrc
(trailingComma: all) conflicts with .eslintrc (comma-dangle functions:
"never"); same workaround used in cebd81b (Fix exceljs#2943) and 2130a3a
(Fix exceljs#2966). Behavior is unchanged.

Refs protobi#45, exceljs#2591.
@senoff senoff force-pushed the fix-45-anchors-undefined branch from 2a67ed0 to e6f42db Compare May 1, 2026 01:42
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