PHPexcel - How can I load an excel file from url - phpexcel

Question

I'm having the following code that I'm using to load, read, write and download an excel file.
//include PHPExcel library
require_once "Classes/PHPExcel/IOFactory.php";
//load Excel template file
$objTpl = PHPExcel_IOFactory::load("excel.xls");
$objTpl->setActiveSheetIndex(0); //set first sheet as active
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->setCellValue('C2', date('Y-m-d')); //set C1 to current date
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getStyle('C2')->getAlignment()->setHorizontal(PHPExcel_Style_Alignment::HORIZONTAL_RIGHT); //C1 is right-justified
$strData = $objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getCell('C3')->getValue();
$strData .= $objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getCell('C4')->getValue();
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->setCellValue('C3', 'It\'s working');
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->setCellValue('C4', 'Dynamic excel read and writing');
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->setCellValue('C6', 'Data read: C3 = '.substr($strData,0,1).' and C4 = '.substr($strData,1,1));
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getStyle('C4')->getAlignment()->setWrapText(true); //set wrapped for some long text message
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getColumnDimension('C')->setWidth(40); //set column C width
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getRowDimension('4')->setRowHeight(120); //set row 4 height
$objTpl->getActiveSheet()->getStyle('A4:C4')->getAlignment()->setVertical(PHPExcel_Style_Alignment::VERTICAL_TOP); //A4 until C4 is vertically top-aligned
//prepare download
$filename=mt_rand(1,100000).'.xls'; //just some random filename
header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="'.$filename.'"');
header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');
$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($objTpl, 'Excel5'); //downloadable file is in Excel 2003 format (.xls)
$objWriter->save('php://output'); //send it to user, of course you can save it to disk also!
My problem is that I want to load the excel file from a different source(url,stream), not from the local directory

Answer 1

Simply save the file to your server and then read it.
file_put_contents('excel.xls',
file_get_contents('https://www.myweburl.com/spreadsheets.xls')
);
$objTpl = PHPExcel_IOFactory::load("excel.xls");