Selecting a sheet using Laravel-Excel and Formatting Columns

Hey everyone,

I'm using the very useful https://github.com/Maatwebsite/Laravel-Excel package.

As I liked the idea of keeping my controllers clear of the excel import code, I'm loading the uploaded file using ExcelFile injections, see here: http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs/import#injection

This is my code for the ExcelFile Injection:

StudentImport.php

namespace App\Excel;

class StudentImport extends \Maatwebsite\Excel\Files\ExcelFile {

    public function getFile()
    {
        return \Input::file('student_file');
    }

    public function getFilters()
    {
        return [];
    }

}

However, my problem is that I don't understand where I run methods like: ->selectSheets('mysheet') when using this approach.

My current work around is doing the following in my controller after using the ExcelFile injection to grab the file

ExcelController.php

$results = $import->get();

foreach($results as $sheet) {
    $sheetTitle = $sheet->getTitle();

    if($sheetTitle === 'students') {
        foreach($sheet as $row) {
            // do something
        }
    }
}

I believe I may need to extend the ExcelFile class and add a new method which will be a wrapper around the selectSheets() method or add it in to the loadFile() method somehow - this seems to be the place where the filters and settings are set up so I guess this is where you might add in a selection of a specific sheet?

Also, I would like to know how to set certain columns to strings as they currently being read as numbers. Currently I have text being output as floats (i.e. they have a following decimal point!), when I dd() the first and only row without using a Value Binder I get the following:

CellCollection {#862 ▼
  #title: null
  #items: array:8 [▼
    "name" => "John Smith"
    "refno" => "s123"
    "nid" => 1234567890.0
    "birth_date" => Carbon {#861 ▼
      +"date": "1971-01-05 00:00:00.000000"
      +"timezone_type": 3
      +"timezone": "UTC"
    }
    "is_active" => 1.0
    "course_title" => "Computer Science"
    "institution_id" => 1.0
    "course_id" => 1.0
  ]
}

I've tried implementing a ValueBinder as mentioned in the docs: http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs/import#formatting but have had no success yet. I only have one column which needs to be read as a date, the rest should be read as text and the following code doesn't work:

namespace App\Excel;

use PHPExcel_Cell;
use PHPExcel_Cell_DataType;
use PHPExcel_Cell_IValueBinder;
use PHPExcel_Cell_DefaultValueBinder;

class StudentValueBinder extends PHPExcel_Cell_DefaultValueBinder implements PHPExcel_Cell_IValueBinder
{
    public function bindValue(PHPExcel_Cell $cell, $value = null)
    {
        if ($cell->getColumn() !== 'D') {

            $cell->setValueExplicit($value, PHPExcel_Cell_DataType::TYPE_STRING);

            return true;
        }

        // else return default behavior
        return parent::bindValue($cell, $value);
    }
}

Any advice would be most appreciated! Thank you.