PHP Excel, but no Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer

Question

I need to save some data in .xls file. I am trying to use PEAR library Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer. It is work. But now i am working with hosting without PEAR. Of cause, it is very terrible.

Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer has a lot of dependencies. I need a module or code, which i can include in my scripts.

Thx.

Answer 1

It's a little-known format that never really caught on, but MS Office has support for so-called Excel 2003 XML files - which are indeed XML and, at a bare minimum, look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
    xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
  <Worksheet>
    <Row>
      <Cell>
        <Data ss:Type="String">First</Data>
      </Cell>
    </Row>
   </Worksheet>
 </Workbook>

You could generate this quite simply without any PHP extensions, and it will open correctly in any version of MS Excel since 2003. OpenOffice 2 and 3 will open these correctly if you rename the file extension to .xls.xml

When a user opens this file and saves it from Excel, it will be, by default, converted to the classic XLS file.

As @Alexander.Plutov notes in a comment, there is a library for writing these files .

There's a useful (and more comprehensive) page on IBM's site about this format and PHP: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-phpexcel/#N101F7

Answer 2

I use Spreadsheet Writer a lot and it's nice to have, but if you don't need multiple sheets or the ability to do some formatting, etc, you an always just output HTML and send a

header("Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel")

and an extension of ".xls" and then Excel or OpenOffice's spreadsheet program (and I assume, I guess, Mac's spreadsheet program) will open it and format the HTML as a spreadsheet.

It's not a native solution but in the end, it looks pretty good to the end-user. You have to use tables in your html but you can add colors/borders, padding, font changes, rowspan, colspan, etc, for a bit of control. No functions or formulas or multiple sheets, though.

Answer 3

从字面上看，PHPExcel： http ：//phpexcel.codeplex.com/

Answer 4

Im using http://www.bettina-attack.de/jonny/view.php/projects/php_writeexcel/

I got it simply included in many projects and it works like a charm.

Answer 5

Beware, the source code provided by Piskvor:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
    xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
  <Worksheet>
    <Row>
      <Cell>
        <Data ss:Type="String">First</Data>
      </Cell>
    </Row>
   </Worksheet>
 </Workbook>

is not a valid Excel file (at least in my version – Excel 2010) and will fail opening producing an error message, as it is missing two required values corrected in the following example (the missing part is that within a WorkSheet you need a Table and a WorkSheet must have a name specified as a string in ss:Name ):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
    xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
   <Worksheet ss:Name="test">
     <Table>
       <Row>
         <Cell>
           <Data ss:Type="String">First</Data>
         </Cell>
       </Row>
     </Table>
   </Worksheet>
 </Workbook>

This then becomes a valid excel spreadsheet indeed and thanks to Piskvor for reminding us of this wonderful open and machine- and human-readable format.