Problem generating excel files

[striker170]

I wish I could have put this in the "General PEAR Questions" section of the forum, but it's locked, so here goes:

I have a database webserver on my local network and I want to be able to generate excel files using data fetched from queries to the SQL server.

Here is the code I'm using to create a test file:

<?php
require_once 'Writer.php';

$workbook = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer();
//$workbook->send('test1.xls');

$worksheet =& $workbook->addWorksheet("Worksheet_1");

$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);

$workbook->close();
?>

It seems to work fine when the line with the send() function is commented out. The excel file is created and saved locally on my webserver. However, when I un-comment the send function in an attempt to download the excel file to my local development machine, I get a file that MS Excel doesn't read properly. For example, here are the contents of cell A1:

ÐÏࡱá;þÿ

Can anyone help me?

[mark]

Your code example works fine here, both by sending it to the browser and by writing a file. The require_once call should look this if you have a proper installation and if have configured the include_path correctly:

[striker170]

I did remove the filename from the constructor when I removed the send call.

The only other thing I've changed at all is the file structure: my test file is in the same folder as Writer.php, hence the difference in the require_once call. I don't have a Spreadsheet or Excel folder: I put everything in a folder called Writer and adjusted the require_once calls accordingly.

I should probably also mention that the output file wasn't purely binary: it had words like 'Name' and 'Age' in there, but they were surrounded by binary junk.

Why would I get binary formatting when sending to my browser and get pure ASCII when just saving to the server?

[striker170]

Ok, I've figured out what's wrong:

I looked at the excel file generated locally on my server (the good file) and the excel file that saved to my local machine through my browser (the bad file).

I compared the two, viewing the files in hexadecimal and literally the only difference between the two is that in the bad file, there's a 0D0A (\r\n) added as the first two characters in the file.

So now that I know this, how do I fix it?

[mark]

Please fix your installation first. It makes no sense to try further steps with a "broken" (read: non-standard) installation of Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer and OLE.

[mark]

My last reply was meant to your first reply. I hadn't seen your new reply. But the new reply indicates that you maybe added a newline while you edited the SEW/OLE files -- something that is not needed and not recommended.

[striker170]

Ok -- I removed the entire PEAR installation directory, re-installed, and put SEW/OLE in their proper place. Currently, the only file I've edited is test.php (from above). I'm still having the same problem: "0D0A" characters are added as the first bytes of the file.

[striker170]

FINALLY fixed this problem. I had one line of whitespace at the top of my .php file before the <?php tag, which caused my whole problem. I hope someone else reads this and avoids my headache.