I'm working on adding an export/downloading feature to a Laravel 5 application. I found the Laravel-Excel library (http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs), which seems perfect -- ideally, I will be able to take a Laravel View or html and make a downloadable Excel file.
So far, I've gotten the creation and storage to work. I can create an Excel file, and it's okay (it's the right data and View), and on the server in storage/exports/ I see "Report.xls" - which is right save path. The issue I'm having is I cannot seem to download the file through the browser after creating it.
The Laravel-Excel library has ->download('xls') and ->export('xls') methods, but these only seems to return the raw content, which is visible in the developer's console:
On the right, you can see the file was created and stored as "Report.xls", and presumably the raw content is the right content - but I don't know why it's just spitting raw content into the console. I can open the Report.xls file in Excel, so I know it's not corrupted.
I also tried to use the Laravel 5 Response::download() function and set headers for the download, but it also spit out raw content in the console instead of downloading the file:
The code I'm using is an AJAX call that hits a Controller method, and the controller method just triggers a Service method called "downloadReportFile()":
public function downloadReportFile($requestData, $fileType) { $configJSON = \Report::loadConfigFile($requestData['reportName']); $today = Carbon::today()->format('Y-m-d'); $FileViewdata = array( 'config' => $configJSON, 'html' => $requestData['report_html'] ); \Excel::create("Report", function($excel) use ($FileViewdata) { $excel->setTitle($FileViewdata['config']['title']); $excel->setDescription($FileViewdata['config']['description']); $excel->sheet("page 1", function($sheet) { $sheet->loadView("reports.sample"); }); })->store('xls', storage_path('exports')); // ->export('xls'); $report_excelFilepath = storage_path('exports') . "/Report.xls"; return response()->download($report_excelFilepath, "Report.xls", [ 'Content-Type' => 'application/vnd.ms-excel', 'Content-Disposition' => "attachment; filename='Report.xls'" ]); } The View being made into the Excel file is a simple table - the same table as in the screenshots. Here's the template/HTML of the View:
<div class="container full-width-container"> <link href="http://192.168.33.10/css/reports.css" rel="stylesheet"> <div id="results" class="row"> <div class="col-xs-12"> <h2 class="report-title">Active Products </h2> <br> <div class="row"> <div class="col-xs-12"> <div class="table-responsive report-component" name="table" template="table"> <table id="report-table" class="table table-striped table-bordered table-hover"> <thead> <tr> <td class="report-table-th">ENGINE</td> <td class="report-table-th">PRODUCT COUNT</td> <td class="report-table-th">PRODUCT PRICE</td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr class="results-cell"> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>Meows</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>1,234</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>781230.00</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> <tbody> <tr class="results-cell"> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>Paws</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>10,777</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>3919823.00</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> <tbody> <tr class="results-cell"> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>Meow Mobile</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>177</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>334323.00</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> <tbody> <tr class="results-cell"> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>Tails Cloud</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>335</p> </td> <td class="report-table-cell"> <p>378918923.00</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Does anyone see what I might be missing to download an XLS file? Thanks for your time!
EDIT After doing some more research, it seems that my original workflow for downloading -- using an AJAX call to trigger -- is part of the problem. For example Download a file from Servlet using Ajax talks about AJAX storing results in JavaScript memory, which would explain why I get content in my console and not a file.
