Handling office open xml (xlsx) documents with PHP

Question

Hi all,

I need to create sort of a php based Excel (xslx) handling component. I figured that there are several open source projects around which are into this. Does anyone has particular experiences / advice on this for me? I.e. which one to go with, which one is to be avoided?

I tend to go with PHP-Excel.

thx in advance for your thoughts...

K

Answer 1

I used PHP-Excel for many times. One of authors have some examples on blog, sorry only in czech.

Answer 2

Hi KB22,

It depends on what you want to accomplish. If you need to precisely generate an excel file, such a package is the way to go. Using it, you can specify the spreadsheet as much as you like/need.

If you need to open a file and search-and-replace in it, usually such packages are unable to do so. Then you had better manually modify the file:

1. Open it as a zip
2. read the structure
3. modify the xml-files
4. save them back to the zip
5. Rename the zip to .xlsx

Sounds tedious, but is a tremendous learning experience and gives you even more control over the file.