PHP output excel file

php_output_excel

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8082523/export-records-in-excel-file

1. Do query in php to get the rows you want to output
2. You can use SELECT * FROM table WHERE id IN (1,2,...)
3. Use mysql_fetch_array() or mysql_fetch_assoc() to get the rows one at a time
4. Use fputcsv() to output them to a file ending in csv - this will properly escape your data

Excel will be able to read the file.

Override the defaults for fputcsv to use tabs for delimiters and Excel will have an even easier time reading the file. If you use commas (the default) you may need to pick commas as the delimiter on Excel import.

Here's a working example assuming you already have rows set up:

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$rows; // predefined
$filename = 'webdata_' . date('Ymd') . '.csv';

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$filename\"");
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream"); 
// that indicates it is binary so the OS won't mess with the filename
// should work for all attachments, not just excel

$out = fopen("php://output", 'w');  // write directly to php output, not to a file
foreach($rows as $row)
{
  fputcsv($out, $row);
}
fclose($out);
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////