CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpexcel
JustSomeDev
JustSomeDev

Reputation: 324

Whats the best method for outputting data to an excel spreadsheet using php

I'd like to be able to output data to a spreadsheet and have been looking at various packages such as PHPExcel and some of the others listed here Alternative for PHP_excel

simply put I want to write specific text into specified cells & colour code certain cells if possible. which is the simplest form of doing so?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 248

Answers (3)

aWebDeveloper
aWebDeveloper

Reputation: 38402

If you are not interested in using PHP Excel you can consider CSV format.

This links should help you. http://php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php http://www.imf.org/external/help/csv.htm

But keep in mind in csv cells or rows cant have any property like in your case colour code. An excel file can simply be saved as a csv file in excel itself

IF csv is not your liking consider Open Document format which will be eaiser to edit than excel's proprietary xml. But excel may need a plugin(OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office) to read it

Look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ods-php/

You can also read this http://www.oasus.ca/ODS_V2.pdf

Upvotes: 0

Mark Baker
Mark Baker

Reputation: 212522

If you want cell formatting such as colour, then I'd certainly recommend PHPExcel... although I do have a certain developer's bias.

Despite offering a wide range of additional features, it is easy to use. You don't specify what format of Excel file you want to write, Excel BIFF file or Office Open XML: PHPExcel offers both. It's still supported (unlike many of the alternatives); and there's a lot of examples showing how to use it in the library package itself, and a helpful message board.

Upvotes: 4

Dr.Kameleon
Dr.Kameleon

Reputation: 22820

Apart from the "coloring" part, I would definitely suggest you go for CSV files (perfectly supported by ALL spreadsheet programs) :

A comma-separated values (CSV) file stores tabular data (numbers and text) in plain-text form. Plain text means that the file is a sequence of characters, with no data that has to be interpreted instead, as binary numbers. A CSV file consists of any number of records, separated by line breaks of some kind; each record consists of fields, separated by some other character or string, most commonly a literal TAB or comma. Usually, all records have an identical sequence of fields.

Example :

Year,Make,Model,Length
1997,Ford,E350,2.34
2000,Mercury,Cougar,2.38

Upvotes: 0

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