What is Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer?

Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer is a tool for creating Excel files without the need for COM components. The files generated by the current version of Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer correspond to the Excel 5 (BIFF5) format, so all functionality until that version of Excel (but not beyond) should be available.

Using it

The most common use for Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer will be spitting out large (or not so large) amounts of information in the form of a spreadsheet, which is easy to manipulate with a fairly ubiquitous spreadsheet program such as Excel (or OpenOffice).

So let's cut to the chase and see how this is done:

<?php
require_once 'Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer.php';

// Creating a workbook
$workbook = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer();

// sending HTTP headers
$workbook->send('test.xls');

// Creating a worksheet
$worksheet =& $workbook->addWorksheet('My first worksheet');

// The actual data
$worksheet->write(0, 0, 'Name');
$worksheet->write(0, 1, 'Age');
$worksheet->write(1, 0, 'John Smith');
$worksheet->write(1, 1, 30);
$worksheet->write(2, 0, 'Johann Schmidt');
$worksheet->write(2, 1, 31);
$worksheet->write(3, 0, 'Juan Herrera');
$worksheet->write(3, 1, 32);

// Let's send the file
$workbook->close();
?>

The first thing you should notice, is that we created a workbook before any worksheets. All worksheets are contained within a workbook, and a workbook may contain several worksheets.

Another important thing, which you should have in mind when programming with Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer, is that ampersand sign (&) that appears when we created our worksheet. That ampersand means we are referencing a Worksheet object instead of copying it. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, all you have to remember is to always use ampersands when calling addWorksheet() for creating a worksheet, or addFormat() for creating a format.

Saving to a regular file

You may have noticed also the following line:

// sending HTTP headers
$workbook->send('test.xls');

For example, if we wanted to save the same spreadsheet we created in our first example to a file named 'test.xls', we would do it like so:

<?php
require_once 'Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer.php';

// We give the path to our file here
$workbook = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer('test.xls');

$worksheet =& $workbook->addWorksheet('My first worksheet');

$worksheet->write(0, 0, 'Name');
$worksheet->write(0, 1, 'Age');
$worksheet->write(1, 0, 'John Smith');
$worksheet->write(1, 1, 30);
$worksheet->write(2, 0, 'Johann Schmidt');
$worksheet->write(2, 1, 31);
$worksheet->write(3, 0, 'Juan Herrera');
$worksheet->write(3, 1, 32);

// We still need to explicitly close the workbook
$workbook->close();
?>

More tutorials

If you would like to learn about formatting (fonts, cell color, text alignment, etc...) with Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer, you can check the formatting tutorial here.