inserting sql output rows to excel file - php

Question

i have 150 rows and 40 columns in a sql table..i am displaying the entire table in a web page..now,what i want to do is create a link on that web page that will take the entire table and insert it in an excel file(dosn't matters if it creates a new excel file,or modifies sum exisiting one)...now i can do it manually by using(PHPExcel library)," objPHPExcel->setCellValue('C5', $v) "...but i would have to write this like 40 times(change '$v' variable in every statment) nd its inside a loop that will run 150 times..hence i dont wanna do it this way..
now i wanted to know if i can insert the table,row by row in the excel sheet..like when i insert a row,it will insert the entire cells of d row..that way it will be pretty easy..so i wanted to know if there any specific commands for doing this..
if not,wat other alternatives do i have of doing this..all i want to do is to export the entire sql table to an excel file using php..

Answer 1

So use the fromArray() method that PHPExcel thoughtfully provides that allows you to write a whole row or whole block of cells in one call from an array.
Looking at the examples and reading the documentation always helps
Additional note
Incidentally, $objPHPExcel->setCellValue('C5', $v) will only work if $objPHPExcel is a worksheet, most of the examples use $objPHPExcel for the workbook (ie the collection of worksheets) so don't get confused
EDIT
For fetching the results from your database, use
sqlsrv_fetch_array($tsql, SQLSRV_FETCH_ASSOC)
or
sqlsrv_fetch_array($tsql, SQLSRV_FETCH_NUMERIC)
EDIT 2
Check how the database is set to handle NULL returns; but using
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->fromArray($rows, 0, 'A'.$rowCNT);
should set all NULL values from the database result to 0 value in PHPExcel

Answer 2

The easiest way is to export a .csv file, which can also be read by excel.
All you have to do is create this page :
<?
header("Content-type: application/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file.csv");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");
$link = mysql_connect('db', 'dblogin', 'dbpasswd');
#mysql_select_db('dbname') or die( "Unable to select database");
$query=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM whatever");
$j=0;
$nbField = mysql_num_fields($query);
while ($j < $nbField) {
echo mysql_field_name($query,$j).";";
$j++;
}
echo "\n";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query, MYSQL_NUM)) { echo implode(";", $row)."\n"; }
?>
Then you insert a link pointing directly to this php page, it will download the csv file.