How would you use PHP to send MySql data to an excel spreadsheet?

[DeepakJ]

I want to make a table with all of my MySQL data in excel but am not quite sure about how to do it. Essentially, there will be a button on a form that you click and then excel will popup with all the information in there. Help would be greatly appreciated.

[trq]

Assuming your on windows you can use php's COM extension to connect to the underlying excell application object.

[DeepakJ]

Anything special I would need to download? Is it very hard?

[ss32]

As long as you are using windows you should be fine.  the only tough part about this is learning all of the specifications of the COM objects you are manipulating.

[DeepakJ]

Ok what should I download to get COM working for Microsoft 2000 Small Business?

[Barand]

another way is

 

SELECT a,b,a+b INTO OUTFILE "/tmp/result.csv"

FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'

LINES TERMINATED BY "\n"

FROM mytable

 

and open the csv in excel

[DeepakJ]

huh? could explain what each part of that does. I'm kinda new to php, started with it last thursday.

[zq29]

huh? could explain what each part of that does. I'm kinda new to php, started with it last thursday.

1. It's SQL, not PHP

2. It's pretty much written in English!

[jscix]

Line 1.  SELECT a,b,a+b INTO OUTFILE "/tmp/result.csv"

---> Selecting which data to process (Which Fields to collect information from)

---> Save collected data into result.csv (File)

Line 2.  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'

Line 3.  LINES TERMINATED BY "\n"

---> I've never used these commands, But I assume they are for data parsing ..

---> Looks like it says: any text that may be enclosed in ' ', and seperated by , and \n signfying the end of a line.

Line 4.  FROM mytable

 

---> The Table which holds the feilds, you are collecting data from .. (See line1)

[Barand]

If you want to go the COM route, see

 

http://web.informbank.com/articles/technology/php-office-documents.htm

[DeepakJ]

how would you do this with comma seperated values. I only wanna make the file. Not necessarily open it and all.

[stemp]

Just try adding the header function and export your data as tab delimited.

 

// The header is the most important part

header('Content-type: application/ms-excel'); header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=FILENAME.xls');

 

// after connecting to your DB

$rows = mysql_fetch_row($result);

 

// Return your result as tab delimited

echo $rows[0]."\t";

echo $rows[1]."\t";

echo $rows[2]."\t";

echo $rows[3]."\t";

echo $rows[4];

[DeepakJ]

Does anyone know a good website that teaches how to do this?