Creating a CSV File from a string using PhpSpreadsheet

Question

Is this possible? or must one use a PHP library such as thephpleague/csv?

Example, according to PhpSpreadsheet's documentation:

$reader      = new \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Reader\Csv();
$spreadsheet = $reader->load($file);

$writer = new \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Writer\Csv($spreadsheet);
$writer->setUseBOM(true);
$writer->setDelimiter(',');
$writer->setEnclosure('');
$writer->setLineEnding("\r\n");
$writer->setSheetIndex(0);

$writer->save('test.csv');

As you can see this completely counter-productive as the load() method requires an actual $file to do essentially the same thing.

Is there a way to use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Writer\Csv() without using the spreadsheet and instead using a string containing CSV data?

Thanks in advance for all positive inputs and suggestions.

Mark Baker · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-07 18:38:32Z

4

You don't need to load a file, you can create an empty Spreadsheet object directly by using

$spreadsheet = new PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Spreadsheet();

as shown in the "Hello World" example in the PHPSPreadsheet documentation

But if all you want to do is write a csv file; then you're far better using PHP's built-in fputcsv() function than a library designed to manipulate genuine spreadsheets with multiple worksheets, formatting, formulae, and working with multiple different file formats, etc.

Or for simply writing a string that's already concatenated (are you sure that you've quoted everything that needs quoting, and escaped everything that needs escaping), just use fwrite().

Counter-productive is building your own csv string and then using a spreadsheet library to write each line.

answered Feb 7, 2019 at 18:38

Mark Baker

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1 Comment

tfont Over a year ago

Thank you for the straightforward explanation and input! Exactly what I was looking for as an answer :]

CrandellWS · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-11 14:38:04Z

1

from the docs: https://phpspreadsheet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/reading-and-writing-to-file/#csv-comma-separated-values

You can also treat a string as if it were the contents of a CSV file as follows:

$reader = new \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Reader\Csv();
$spreadsheet = $reader->loadSpreadsheetFromString($data);

answered Mar 11, 2023 at 14:38

CrandellWS

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