Excel Not Saved as Numeric Format (MySQL to Excel)

Question

I have a script that allows me to convert a database from MySQL to Excel .xls format, It was a success,

here is the code

<?php

// DB TABLE Exporter
//
// How to use:
//
// Place this file in a safe place, edit the info just below here
// browse to the file, enjoy!

// CHANGE THIS STUFF FOR WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
     $cdate = date("Y-m-d");
     $dbhost  = "localhost";
     $dbuser  = "-";
     $dbpass  = "-";
     $dbname  = "-";
     $dbtable = "-";
     $filename = "C:\xxx";


// END CHANGING STUFF


// first thing that we are going to do is make some functions for writing out
// and excel file. These functions do some hex writing and to be honest I got 
// them from some where else but hey it works so I am not going to question it 
// just reuse


// This one makes the beginning of the xls file
function xlsBOF() {
    echo pack("ssssss", 0x809, 0x8, 0x0, 0x10, 0x0, 0x0);
    return;
}

// This one makes the end of the xls file
function xlsEOF() {
    echo pack("ss", 0x0A, 0x00);
    return;
}

// this will write text in the cell you specify
function xlsWriteLabel($Row, $Col, $Value ) {
    $L = strlen($Value);
    echo pack("ssssss", 0x204, 8 + $L, $Row, $Col, 0x0, $L);
    echo $Value;
    return;
}



// make the connection an DB query
$dbc = mysql_connect( $dbhost , $dbuser , $dbpass ) or die( mysql_error() );
mysql_select_db( $dbname );
$q = "SELECT * FROM ".$dbtable." ";
$qr = mysql_query( $q ) or die( mysql_error() );

//start the object
 ob_start();

// start the file
xlsBOF();

// these will be used for keeping things in order.
$col = 0;
$row = 0;

// This tells us that we are on the first row
$first = true;

while( $qrow = mysql_fetch_assoc( $qr ) )
{
    // Ok we are on the first row
    // lets make some headers of sorts
    if( $first )
    {
        // di comment karena ini ngasih label tabelnya, sepertinya nggak butuh
        //foreach( $qrow as $k => $v )
        //{
        //   // take the key and make label
        //   // make it uppper case and replace _ with ' '
        //   xlsWriteLabel( $row, $col, strtoupper( ereg_replace( "_" , " " , $k ) ) );
        //   $col++;
        //}

        // prepare for the first real data row
        $col = 0;
        $row = 0;//$row++; // nyoba
        $first = false;
    }

    // go through the data
    foreach( $qrow as $k => $v )
    {

        // write it out
        xlsWriteLabel( $row, $col, $v );
        $col++;
    }

    // reset col and goto next row
    $col = 0;
    $row++;

}

xlsEOF();

//write the contents of the object to a file
file_put_contents($filename, ob_get_clean());

?>

this code produced a .xls file. I used Matlab to read my .xls file through readxls function, but it didn't recognize the value inside the .xls file as a numeric data, so my script on matlab couldn't make a matrix from reading my xls file. I had to convert it manually inside excel, there were some pop-ups near the value that offers me to convert it into numbers

Answer 1

If your goal is to take data from MySQL and put it in Matlab it might be easier to directly connect to MySQL from Matlab rather than sending the data through the xls format.

http://www.mathworks.com/help/database/ug/database.fetch.html