Generating large Excel files from MySQL data with PHP from corporate applications

Question

We're developing and maintaining a couple of systems, which need to export reports in Excel format to the end user. The reports are gathered from a MySQL database with some trivial processing and usually result in ~40000 rows of data with 10-15 columns, we're expecting the amount of data to grow steadily.

At the moment we're using PHPExcel for the Excel generation, but it's not working for us anymore. After we go above 5000 rows, the memory consumption and loading times become untolerable, and can't be solved by indefinitely increasing PHP's maximum limits for memory usage and script execution times. Processing of the data is as lean as possible, and the entire problem is with PHPExcel being a memory hog. CSV generation would be lighter, but unfortunately we're required to export Excel (and Excel alone) from our services due to user demands. This is due to formatting requirements etc., so CSV isn't an option.

Any ideas/recommendations for a third party application/module/service/what ever for generating large excels? Doesn't matter if it's a commercial licence, as long as it fits our needs, can be integrated to existing PHP applications and does its job. Our services are generally running on linux/php/mysql and we can do just about whatever we need to do with the servers.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For such a large amount of data I would not recommend tools like PHPExcel or ApachePOI (for Java) because of their memory requirements. I have struggled with similar task recently and I have found convenient (but maybe little bit fiddly) way to inject data into spreadsheets. Serverside generation or updating of Excel spreadsheets can be achieved thus simple XML editing. I have XLSX spreadsheet sitting on the server and every time data is gathered from dB, I unzip it using php. Then I access specific XML files that are holding contents of worksheets that need to be injected and insert data manually. Afterwards, I compress spreadsheet folder in order to distribute it as an regular XLSX file. Whole process is quite fast and reliable. Obviously, there are few issues and glitches related to inner organisation of XLSX/Open XML file (e. g. Excel tend to store all strings in separate table and use references to this table in worksheets). But when injecting only data like numbers and strings, it is not that hard. If anyone is interested, I can provide some code.

Okay, here goes sample code for this. I have tried to comment what it does, but feel free to ask for further explanation.

<?php
/** 
 * Class for serverside spreadsheet data injecting
 * Reqs: unzip.php, zip.php (containing any utility functions able to unzip files & zip folders)
 *
 * Author: Poborak
 */
class DataInjector
{    
    //spreadsheet file, we inject data into this one
    const SPREADSHEET_FILE="datafile.xlsx";   
    // specific worksheet into which data are being injected    
    const SPREADSHEET_WORKSHEET_FILE="/xl/worksheets/sheet7.xml"; 
    //working directory, spreadsheet is extracted here
    const WSPACE_DIR="Wspace";
    // query for obtaining data from DB
    const STORE_QUERY = "SELECT * FROM stores ORDER BY store_number ASC"; 

    private $dbConn;
    private $storesData;

    /**
     * @param   mysqli  $dbConn
     */
    function __construct(mysqli $dbConn) {   
        $this->dbConn = $dbConn;
    }

    /**
     * Main method for whole injection process
     * First data are gathered from DB and spreadsheet is decompressed to workspace.
     * Then injection takes place and spreadsheet is ready to be rebuilt again by zipping.
     *
     * @return   boolean    Informace o úspěchu
     */     
    public function injectData() {

        if (!$this->getStoresInfoFromDB()) return false;        
        if (!$this->explodeSpreadsheet(self::SPREADSHEET_FILE,self::WSPACE_DIR)) return false;                      
        if (!$this->injectDataToSpreadsheet(self::WSPACE_SUBDIR.self::SPREADSHEET_WORKSHEET_FILE)) return false;            
        if (!$this->implodeSpreadsheet(self::SPREADSHEET_FILE,self::WSPACE_DIR)) return false;
        return true;
    }

    /**
     * Decompress spreadsheet file to folder
     *
     * @param   string  $spreadsheet
     * @param   string  $targetFolder
     *
     * @return   boolean    success/fail 
     */   
    private function explodeSpreadsheet($spreadsheet, $targetFolder) {
        return unzip($spreadsheet,$targetFolder);
    }

    /**
     * Compress source folder to spreadsheet file
     *
     * @param   string  $spreadsheet    
     * @param   string  $sourceFolder
     *
     * @return   boolean    success/fail 
     */   
    private function implodeSpreadsheet($spreadsheet, $sourceFolder) {
        return zip($sourceFolder,$spreadsheet);
    }

    /**
     * Loads data from DB to member variable $storesDetails (as array)
     *
     * @return   boolean    success/fail 
     */ 
    private function getStoresInfoFromDb() {
        unset($this->storesData);       

        if ($stmt = $this->dbConn->prepare(self::STORE_QUERY)) {
            $stmt->execute();
            $stmt->bind_result($store_number, $store_regional_manager, $store_manager, $store_city, $store_address);
            while ($stmt->fetch()) {
                $this->storesData[trim($store_number)] = array(trim($store_regional_manager),trim($store_manager),trim($store_address),trim($store_city));
            }           
            $stmt->close();
        }   
        return true;        
    }

    /**
     * Injects data from member variable $storesDetails to spreadsheet $ws
     *
     * @param   string  $ws target worksheet
     *
     * @return   boolean    success/fail
     */ 
    private function injectDataToSpreadsheet($ws) {
         $worksheet = file_get_contents($ws);    
         if ($worksheet === false or empty($this->storesData) return false;

         $xml = simplexml_load_string($worksheet);  
         if (!$xml) return false;

        // Loop through $storesDetails array containing rows of data
        foreach ($this->storesData as $std){

            // For each row of data create new row in excel worksheet
            $newRow = $xml->sheetData->addChild('row'); 

            // Loop through columns values in rowdata
            foreach ($std as $cbd){                      
                // Save each column value into next column in worksheets row 
                 foreach ($this->storesData as $cbd){
                    $newCell = $newRow->addChild('c'); 
                    $newCell->addAttribute('t', "inlineStr");
                    $newIs = $newCell->addChild('is');
                    // text has to be saved as utf-8 (otherwise the spreadsheet file become corrupted)
                    if (!mb_check_encoding($cbd, 'utf-8')) $cbd = iconv("cp1250","utf-8",$cbd); 
                    $newT = $newIs->addChild('t',$cbd);                     
                }
             }
         }

         // Save xml data back to worksheet file
         if (file_put_contents($ws, $xml->asXML()) !== false) return true;           
    }
}
?>   

Answer 2

The list of alternatives for PHPExcel that I try to keep up to date is here

If you're after raw speed/memory performance above and beyond anything that PHPExcel can offer, then the only one I'd actually recommend is Ilia's wrapper extension for libXL, because the library is still actively supported.