PHP with Excel

#1 January 16th, 2007, 10:15 AM

Hi,
Can i write to MS-Excel using PHP? I am using PHP 5 on Linux. Any help
would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Raghu

#2 January 16th, 2007, 10:55 AM

ABC wrote:

Quote:

Hi,
Can i write to MS-Excel using PHP? I am using PHP 5 on Linux. Any help
would be appreciated!
>
Thanks,
Raghu

That depends - you can write a file, which Excel can read, and add a
link to that. AFAIK only ASP has an option to open a file in Excel.
Correct me if I am wrong.

Af for exporting there are a few tricks:

$ff3=fopen($targetdir."\\some_file.xls", "w");
fwrite($ff3, "<html><table border=1>\r\n");
fwrite($ff3, "<tr><td><b>Item:</b></td<td><b>Used
in:</b></td<tr>\r\n");
fwrite($ff3, "<tr><td>sugar</td><td>coffee</td></tr>");

For tricks with numbers, try:
<STYLE TYPE="text/css"></STYLE>
and use it like
<td class=""number2dec"">" . $price ."</td><td class=""number2dec"">
=d" . $y1 . "*e" . $y2 ."</td>"
This will add the first as a number, and the seconds as a fomula.

Try play around with this.

S

#3 January 16th, 2007, 03:15 PM

PEAR can nicely write an Excel-File. I use it in one of my projects and
it works really good.
http://pear.php.net/package/Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer

Hope that helps.

#4 January 16th, 2007, 05:45 PM

ABC wrote:

Quote:

Hi,
Can i write to MS-Excel using PHP? I am using PHP 5 on Linux. Any help
would be appreciated!
>
Thanks,
Raghu
>

As mentioned, the Pear package works well.

If your target spreadsheet is very complicated, though, you could always
just write out a csv file of the data, and use some VBA code in Excel to
import it as you saw fit.

This would however entail the user running macros when the sheet opens,
and not all folks like to do that.

#5 January 16th, 2007, 07:55 PM

Cord-Heinrich Pahlmann wrote:

Quote:

PEAR can nicely write an Excel-File. I use it in one of my projects and
it works really good.
http://pear.php.net/package/Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer

I second that - it works well and you have reasonable control over
formatting so you can make sure that the exported file looks nice.

Pete

--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk

#6 January 17th, 2007, 03:55 AM

ABC wrote:

Quote:

Hi,
Can i write to MS-Excel using PHP? I am using PHP 5 on Linux. Any help
would be appreciated!

Easy! Just give an XML, HTML, CSV or other file an ".xls"
extension. Excel will load it like it and display it and
manipulate it just fine.

#7 January 17th, 2007, 08:15 PM

Sanders Kaufman wrote:

Quote:

Easy! Just give an XML, HTML, CSV or other file an ".xls"
extension. Excel will load it like it and display it and
manipulate it just fine.

Really though - Spreadsheet_Excell_Writer is not that difficult and there
are good examples of its use on the web - it gives so much more with only a
little bit of learning.

Pete

--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk

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