Write a million records into an Excel

Question

I tried to write data into excel with a million record using phpExcel. but it take too much time.

 

    $header=array('test1','test1','test1','test1','test1','test1','test1','test1');
    
$objPHPExcel = new PHPExcel();
    
    // Set document properties
     
   $objPHPExcel->getProperties()->setCreator("Maarten Balliauw")
                                     ->setLastModifiedBy("Maarten Balliauw")
                                     ->setTitle("Office 2007 XLSX Test Document")
                                     ->setSubject("Office 2007 XLSX Test Document")
                                     ->setDescription("Test document for Office 2007 XLSX, generated using PHP classes.")
                                     ->setKeywords("office 2007 openxml php")
                                     ->setCategory("Test result file");

     
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->fromArray($header,NULL,'A1');  
     
$sheet = $objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet();  
    
// $final_xls_data1 is set of small records
    // $rowcount this variable is set of old rowcounts and set 
$rowcount=$rowcount +1.
    
// create 8 small set of records. then add array in excel object
    $sheet->fromArray($final_xls_data1,NULL,'A'.$rowcount);

    $objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setTitle('Simple');

        $objPHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0);  
    header('Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet');
        header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="01simple.xlsx"');
        header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');
        header('Cache-Control: max-age=1');
        header ('Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT'); // Date in the past
        header ('Last-Modified: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s').' GMT'); // always modified
        header ('Cache-Control: cache, must-revalidate'); // HTTP/1.1
        header ('Pragma: public'); // HTTP/1.0

        $objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($objPHPExcel, 'Excel2007');
        $objWriter->save($xls_file_path);

How can I do this?

Answer 1

If you are using PHPExcel, look at this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5984286/4499987. Mark talks about a bunch of ways to optimize PHPExcel. There are a lot of other posts that you can find help from.

If you really care about speed, I'd also recommend you to take a look at Spout: https://github.com/box/spout. It is super simple to use, does not require any optimizations and should help you create your Excel file in no time!