PHPExecel file is empty when send as in attachment - phpexcel

Question

An excel file is created using phpexcel which is saved in the folder with all the data. The same file cannot be send as an attachment in the mail. I would also like to upload the excel in the form in order to make changes.
Please advice. Here is the code.
<?php
//include PHPExcel library
require_once "Classes/PHPExcel.php";
require_once "Classes/PHPExcel/IOFactory.php";
if (!empty($_POST['submit'])) {
//give a filename
$dtime = date('Y-m-d H-i-s');
$dtimeFile = date('Y-m-d-H-i-s');
date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Singapore');
$filename = 'myexcel'.$dtimeFile.'.xls';
$path = __DIR__;
//set headers to download file
header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename='.$filename);
// create new PHPExcel object
$objTpl = new PHPExcel;
// set default font
$objTpl->getDefaultStyle()->getFont()->setName('Calibri');
// set default font size
$objTpl->getDefaultStyle()->getFont()->setSize(8);
// create the writer
$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($objTpl, "Excel5");
// writer already created the first sheet for us, let's get it
$objSheet = $objTpl->getActiveSheet();
// rename the sheet
$objSheet->setTitle('My Personal Details');
// let's bold and size the header font and write the header
// as you can see, we can specify a range of cells, like here: cells from A1 to A4
$objSheet->getStyle('A1:C1')->getFont()->setBold(true)->setSize(12);
$objSheet->getStyle('A2:C2')->getFont()->setSize(12);
// write header
$objSheet->getCell('A1')->setValue('Name');
$objSheet->getCell('B1')->setValue('Email');
$objSheet->getCell('C1')->setValue('Location');
// we could get this data from database, but for simplicty, let's just write it
$objSheet->getCell('A2')->setValue(stripslashes($_POST['name']));
$objSheet->getCell('B2')->setValue(stripslashes($_POST['email']));
$objSheet->getCell('C2')->setValue(stripslashes($_POST['location']));
// // autosize the columns
// $objSheet->getColumnDimension('A')->setAutoSize(true);
// $objSheet->getColumnDimension('B')->setAutoSize(true);
// $objSheet->getColumnDimension('C')->setAutoSize(true);
// $objSheet->getColumnDimension('D')->setAutoSize(true);
$objWriter->save('php://output');
$to = "cloudinnovates#hotmail.com";
$subject = $filename;
$from = "shabs0#hotmail.com";
$headers = "From: $from\r\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"
."Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"1a2a3a\"";
$message .= "If you can see this MIME than your client doesn't accept MIME types!\r\n"
."--1a2a3a\r\n";
$message .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\r\n"
."Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n"
."Attached is the file number \"".$filename."\"\r\n\r\n"
."--1a2a3a\r\n";
$file = $path.$filename;
$file_size = filesize($file);
$handle = fopen($file, "r");
$content = fread($handle, $file_size);
fclose($handle);
$message .= "Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel; name=\"".$filename."\"\r\n"
."Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n"
."Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$filename."\"\r\n\r\n"
."\r\n"
.chunk_split(base64_encode($content))
."--1a2a3a--";
// Send email
//
$success = mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
if (!$success) {
echo "Mail to ".$to." failed .";
} else {
echo "Success : Mail was send to ".$to;
}
}
//*************** upload file ***************//
if (!empty($_POST['btn-upload'])) {
$file = 'file';
$Reader = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createReaderForFile($file);
$Reader->setReadDataOnly(true);// set this, to not read all excel properties, just data
$objXLS = $Reader->load($file);
$value = $objXLS->getSheet(0)->getCell('A1')->getValue();
$objXLS->disconnectWorksheets();
unset($objXLS);
}
?>

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with PHP Excel and have not worked with PHP for a long time, but something stands out to me in your code.
You initialize a variable for the file name
$filename = 'myexcel'.$dtimeFile.'.xls';
and attempt to read the content of the file like this
$file = $path.$filename;
$file_size = filesize($file);
$handle = fopen($file, "r");
$content = fread($handle, $file_size);
fclose($handle);
But you don't appear to actually save your Excel sheet to that file. Rather, you seem to write it to the output stream of the current PHP page.
$objWriter->save('php://output');
Setting the content-disposition header
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename='.$filename);
tells the browser opening this PHP page what to do with the data returned by the PHP page, but does not save the file to your local server, so that it can be attached to an email on that server.
You will need to save the Excel file to a location on your local server before it is attached to the email.