Raw Output

[Aaron Clausen]

Is it possible to generate raw output for a view other than view.raw.php?

Specifically I'm trying desparately to get PHPExcel working properly
but overriding headers and writing to php://output is giving me
corrupted files.

--
Aaron Clausen
mightym...@gmail.com

[Aaron Clausen]

Okay, to make things a bit more specific, this is my code:

class TestComponentViewReport extends JViewLegacy {
public function display($tpl = null) {

jimport('phpexcel.library.PHPExcel');
header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="01simple.xlsx"');
header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');
$objPHPExcel = new PHPExcel();

$this->assignRef('PHPExcel', $objPHPExcel);
$tpl = 'excel';
parent::display($tpl);
}
}

I also have a tmpl/default_excel.php that looks something like this:

<?php

$this->PHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0)
->setCellValue('A1', 'Hello')
->setCellValue('B2', 'world!')
->setCellValue('C1', 'Hello')
->setCellValue('D2', 'world!');

$this->PHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setTitle('Simple');
$this->PHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0);
$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($this->PHPExcel, 'Excel2007');
$objWriter->save('php://output');

Aaron Clausen

[Matt Thomas]

I'm not familiar with PHPExcel, but assuming that $objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($this->PHPExcel, 'Excel2007'); creates the Excel file, I think you can do something like:

<?php

$this->PHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0)
->setCellValue('A1', 'Hello')
->setCellValue('B2', 'world!')
->setCellValue('C1', 'Hello')
->setCellValue('D2', 'world!');

$this->PHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setTitle('Simple');
$this->PHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0);
$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($this->PHPExcel, 'Excel2007');

echo $objWriter,

JFactory::getApplication()->close();

You can read more about this approach at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/joomla-dev-cms/WsC0nA9Fixo/Ur-gPqpqh-EJ

Best,

Matt Thomas

Founder betweenbrain™

Lead Developer Construct Template Development Framework

Phone: 203.632.9322
Twitter: @betweenbrain

Github: https://github.com/betweenbrain

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[Bakual]

I'm using PHPExcel in an extension I write for my company. You can have a look at it here: https://github.com/Bakual/Wissensmatrix, to be more precise this view: https://github.com/Bakual/Wissensmatrix/tree/master/site/views/reportfwigteam.

 

I'm not using the raw format, I use an "xls" format. But it doesn't really make a difference. Fact is you need to use a view.raw.php or in my case a view.xls.php or it will not work. Using the default view.html.php will generate the HTML headers and corrupt the file.

[Aaron Clausen]

Okay, I think I solved my problem. This appears to be a buffering
problem. It's probably something specific to PHP 5.3.3 on my copy of
Squeeze. I did turn output_buffering=off in the php.ini file, but it
had no effect. In the end I stumbled on this rather simple solution.
Before I invoke $objWriter->save('php://output'), I put in a
ob_end_clean(). Something like:

$objPHPExcel = new PHPExcel();
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setTitle('Simple');
ob_end_clean();
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Type: application/download");;
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=test.xlsx");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary ");
$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($objPHPExcel, 'Excel2007');

$objWriter->save('php://output');

When I do that, an uncorrupted xls file is downloaded that I can open in Excel.

Thanks everyone for your help! Another mystery solved...

Aaron Clausen

[Bakual]

Just a thought: There may also be issues with system or content plugins which are not properly coded. If those produce a line break, it may corrupt your file as well. Also sometimes those plugins don't check for the document type and produce HTML and/or Javascript code even if it's not a HTML document. Those will break the file as well.

Maybe you faced this and your ob_end_clean does remove this output.

[Aaron Clausen]

This is a bare install of 3.1. I haven't put any other plugins in, and
the only extension of any kind is the PHPExcel library itself. Since I
don't see how ob_end_clean() can hurt, I'll happily leave it in there.

Thanks for the tips everyone! You folks are an invaluable resource for
a guy trying to get his head around Joomla 3.

Aaron