Download xlsx file using php - php

Question

I need make xlsx file download from my site (but not from directly open file url like this: http://site.com/file.xlsx )
So, this is php code
$file = "somefile.xlsx";
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($file));
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($file);
file is downloaded, his extension is .xlsx, but when trying open this file in ms excel, file not opened and I got error : excel cannot open the file.xlsx because the file format or file extension is not valid
Tell please, why this happened? where I am wrong?

Answer 1

After many years, I got same problem, and after searching, I got here again ))
This is solution, that worked for me:
$file = "somefile.xlsx";
// define file $mime type here
ob_end_clean(); // this is solution
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: ' . $mime);
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary");
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"" . basename($file) . "\"");
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
readfile($file);

Answer 2

You must be using this code in middle of some other file.
The problem with headers is they need to be set first on a page. They will not work if you have even 1 single space echoing before them. So you need to ob_clean() [clean the buffer] before you are setting headers
Try
ob_clean();
flush();
$file = "somefile.xlsx";
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($file));
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
readfile($file);

Answer 3

Remove:
ob_clean();
flush();
Add at the end of code:
exit();
The issue is that flush() will also throw in your *.xlsx file content some garbage it has in it and that will corupt your file, even if you use ob_clean();
For a better understanding go to php.net and read the difference between flush(), ob_flush() and find that you didn't even need them in the first case. Therefore you won't need the ob_clean() too.

Answer 4

This works for me:
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".basename($fileLocation)."\"");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Pragma: public");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($fileLocation)); //Remove
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($fileLocation);