phpexcel file download issue

Question

I am using the 05featuredemo.php example of the phpexcel, which is downloaded from the codeplex Latest Built PHPExcel_1.8.0_doc by MarkBaker ( SO )

The point i need i look is

$objWriter->save(str_replace('.php', '.xls', __FILE__));

Above is used for saving the file in the script location, But How can i make it as simple downloadable.

I tried with

$objWriter->save('php://output');

But It didn't download the file that is generated. How can i do that, Is there any other thing i should do ?

Answer 1

If you're sending anything other than straight HTML to a browser, then you need to send the appropriate headers so that the browser can know how to handle it.

There is a section of the developer documentation entitled Redirect output to a client's web browser that explains this, and it's also demonstrated in examples like 01simple-download-xls.php and 01simple-download-xlsx.php

Answer 2

If you want to give name by yourself then you can specify as I have specified in $a .

I wanted to use a filename from where this function is being called so I concat that name to the excel filename and also attached current date to the filename.

Note: LogReport is a folder where my files will be downloaded.

self::$objPHPExcel = new PHPExcel();
$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter(self::$objPHPExcel, 'Excel2007');
        $a = 'Log' . self::$filename . date("Y-m-d") . '.xlsx';
        $objWriter->save(__DIR__ . '/LogReport/' . $a);