Symfony2 PHPWord response - symfony

Question

I am trying to generate a docx document on Symfony2, using the PHPWord bundle.
In my controller, I succeed in returning a docx file, but it is empty, I think it comes from my faulty response format.
public function indexAction($id)
{
$PHPWord = new PHPWord();
$section = $PHPWord->addSection();
$section->addText(htmlspecialchars(
'"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. '
. 'The important thing is not to stop questioning." '
. '(Albert Einstein)'
));
// Saving the document
$objWriter = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($PHPWord, 'Word2007');
return new Response($objWriter->save('helloWorld.docx'), 200, array('Content-Type' => 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document'));
}

Answer 1

Try this class
<?php
use PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory;
use PhpOffice\PhpWord\PhpWord;
use PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
class WordResponse extends Response
{
/**
* WordResponse constructor.
* #param string $name The name of the word file
* #param PhpWord $word
*/
public function __construct($name, &$word)
{
parent::__construct();
// Set default zip library.
if( !class_exists('ZipArchive')){
Settings::setZipClass(Settings::PCLZIP);
}
$writer = IOFactory::createWriter($word, 'Word2007');
//Set headers.
$this->headers->set("Content-Disposition", 'attachment; filename="' . $name . '"');
$this->headers->set("Content-Type", 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document');
$this->headers->set("Content-Transfer-Encoding", 'binary');
$this->headers->set("Cache-Control", 'must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
$this->headers->set("Expires", '0');
$this->sendHeaders();
$writer->save('php://output');
}
}
Then in your controller do:
return new WordResponse($phpWord, "filename.docx");

Answer 2

Thanks a lot for your answer.
I achieve using the 2nd method, which is in my opinion the best.
I just have to return a response, otherwise the file was generated, but stuck in the web directory.
Using this response, everything was fine and a download prompt appeared, with the "full" file.
Here's my code :
$PHPWord = new PHPWord();
$section = $PHPWord->addSection();
$section->addText(htmlspecialchars(
'"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. '
. 'The important thing is not to stop questioning." '
. '(Albert Einstein)'
));
// Saving the document
$objWriter = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($PHPWord, 'Word2007');
$filename="MyAwesomeFile.docx";
$objWriter->save($filename, 'Word2007', true);
$path = $this->get('kernel')->getRootDir(). "/../web/" . $filename;
$content = file_get_contents($path);
$response = new Response();
$response->headers->set('Content-Type', 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document');
$response->headers->set('Content-Disposition', 'attachment;filename="'.$filename);
$response->setContent($content);
return $response;

Answer 3

PHPWord->save() returns a true value so that would be why your file is not being downloaded. With your return new Response() you are setting the content of your response to true (the result of your save call) which is why your response is empty.
You have 2 (and probably more that I haven't thought of) options to generate and download this file..
1. Save your file to a temp folder and server from there
$filename = sprintf(
'%s%sDoc-Storage%s%s.%s',
sys_get_temp_dir(),
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR,
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR,
uniqid(),
'docx'
);
$objWriter->save($filename);
$response = new BinaryFileResponse($filename);
For more info on the BinaryFileResponse see the docs.
2. Ignore Symfony and serve directly via the PHPWord action
$objWriter->save($filename, 'Word2007', true);
exit();
The ->save method provides all of the actions to download the generated file internally (see the code) so all you need to do is set the format and the third parameter to true and it will handle all of the headers for you. Granted it won't be returning a Symfony response but you will be exiting out before you get to that exception.