Where is my file?

superthin · 08-22-2008, 05:52 AM

Hi every body,

I am creating a small project to manage some books for my team. Exporting database to an Excel (*.xls) file is very important because an the team's member will use that file to import into an barcode printing application.

I found Class: MS-Excel Stream Handler (excel, xls, spreadsheet, read excel) - PHP Classes . This class is useful. I could get an Excel file like I expected (through download, cannot find file on server).

The problem was I cannot understand:

Code:

// line 9 to 15 in example_export.php from the class above

require_once "excel.php";
$export_file = "xlsfile://tmp/example.xls";
$fp = fopen($export_file, "wb");
if (!is_resource($fp))
{
    die("Cannot open $export_file");
}

$export_file = "xlsfile://tmp/example.xls";

What is xlsfile:// ? The class's author said that. It is protocol to generate Excel file.

I cannot find example.xls in any folder on my PC. If I change xlsfile://tmp/example.xls into absolute path like xlsfile://C:/temp/example.xls or any another, an error:

Quote:

Warning: fopen(xlsfile://c:/temp/example.xls) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: "xlsStream::stream_open" call failed in...
(view source is $fp = fopen($export_file, "wb"); )

How to fix to get generated file?

I use Windows XP Service Pack 2. The web server is localhost use AppServ 2.5.10. The web server was installed in C:\AppServ as default.

Please tell me can I get my file. Which file was generated and store on server (NOT from download).

Thank you.

tripy · 08-26-2008, 01:20 PM

xlsfile:// is known as a protocol for your browser. Think like http://, or ftp://, or file://
Probably, it's used by IE and excel to open an excel file without having to physically create it.

But what strikes me is that you have an unix/linux/bsd file path notation in there:
/tmp/example.xls

Try maybe to look in the temp folder of your server/user, as /tmp is the regular temp place on linux.

But by the way, it's even way simpler than that...
Simply create an html table, and send an header like this:

PHP Code:


			
header("Content-Type:  application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");

before writing the table. Excel will open the html table like it was an spreadsheet...