Excel output

StaticPHP\Presentation\Models\Tables\Output\Excel is the second implementation of OutputInterface. It walks the same Table the HTML generator does and writes an .xlsx file instead of markup.

The dependency

The file opens with three imports from a library the package does not require:

<?php

use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Spreadsheet;
use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Cell\DataType;
use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\IOFactory;

phpoffice/phpspreadsheet is declared in composer.json, but twice over and in neither place as a hard dependency - once in require-dev, once in suggest:

"require-dev": {
    "phpoffice/phpspreadsheet": "^3.0 || ^4.0",
    "phpstan/phpstan": "^2.2",
    "phpstan/phpstan-phpunit": "^2.0",
    "phpunit/phpunit": "^13.0",
    "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "^4.0",
    "twig/twig": "^3.0"
},
"suggest": {
    "phpoffice/phpspreadsheet": "Required by Presentation\\Models\\Tables\\Output\\Excel. Nothing else in the package touches it, so a table that only renders html does not need it."
}

What each of those means for an application that depends on this package:

• require-dev is the package’s own development environment. Composer ignores a dependency’s require-dev, so requiring 4apps/staticphp-core never pulls phpspreadsheet in. It is declared there so this class can be exercised by the package’s own test suite - tests/Presentation/Models/Tables/ExcelOutputTest.php - and so CI installs it.
• suggest is advisory. Composer prints it after an install and composer suggest lists it; it installs nothing and constrains nothing.

require is untouched by either, and is still php plus three extensions:

"require": {
    "php": ">=8.4 <9",
    "ext-intl": "*",
    "ext-mbstring": "*",
    "ext-pdo": "*"
}

So an application that wants an .xlsx export requires the library itself:

composer require phpoffice/phpspreadsheet

Nothing else in src/ references it, so an installation without it runs perfectly well and only this one class is unusable - the failure is a fatal “class not found” the moment makeOutput() is reached, not a degraded fallback.

Its own extension requirements are its to declare; consult its documentation rather than this page. This package’s CI workflow installs intl, mbstring, xml, zip, gd, bcmath and the PDO drivers, and gd is there on phpspreadsheet’s account so that the Excel output test can run.

What on this page was executed

The captured block under Cell types is a real makeOutput() run. The download path below - the headers and the write to php://output - is described from the source rather than exercised, since it only means anything inside a request.

Settings

Property	Type	Default
$filename	string	''
$author	string	''
$formatter	?\Closure	null

$filename is used without the extension - showOutput() appends .xlsx. $author goes into the workbook properties as both creator and last modified by. $formatter is called with the Spreadsheet object after the data is written and before it is saved, which is the only place to set column widths, styles or freeze panes.

<?php

use StaticPHP\Presentation\Models\Tables\Output\Excel;

$output = new Excel($table);
$output->filename = 'users-2026-08';
$output->author = 'Reporting';
$output->formatter = function ($xls) {
    $sheet = $xls->getActiveSheet();
    $sheet->getStyle('A1:D1')->getFont()->setBold(true);
    $sheet->freezePane('A2');
};

$table->outputGenerator = $output;
$table->showOutput();

makeOutput()

Returns a Spreadsheet rather than a string - the signature is makeOutput(): Spreadsheet. OutputInterface::makeOutput() is declared : mixed, which both generators narrow: Html to string, Excel to Spreadsheet.

It writes to sheet index 0. Row 1 is the header, taken from each column’s $title; data starts at row 2. A column is skipped when its $exportKey is exactly false or its $type is ColumnType::ROW_NUMBER.

The value for a cell comes from $exportKey, falling back to $dataKey when $exportKey is null:

<?php

$exportKey = $column->exportKey;
if ($column->exportKey === null) {
    $exportKey = $column->dataKey;
}

$cellValue = (
    is_callable($exportKey)
    ? $exportKey($column, $rowIndex, $rowItem)
    : ($rowItem[(string) $exportKey] ?? null)
);

Note what this path does not do:

• It ignores $dataFormatter entirely. The HTML generator’s number and date formatting does not apply; raw row values reach the sheet. Format in the closure, or in $exportKey.
• It ignores $showColumn. A column hidden in the HTML table is still exported.
• It does not tell a missing key from a null one. The lookup is ?? null, so a key that is not in the row is silently null and lands as 0 in a numeric column and '' in every other. Both $exportKey and $dataKey default to null, so a column with neither set looks the row up under the key '' and exports empty cells rather than announcing itself.

Closure $exportKeys get three arguments - ($column, $rowIndex, $rowItem) - one fewer than the four the HTML generator passes to $dataKey.

Cell types

Every cell is written with setValueExplicit() under a switch on the column type:

<?php

switch ($column->type) {
    case ColumnType::INT:
    case ColumnType::DECIMAL:
        $cell->setValueExplicit($cellValue ?? 0, DataType::TYPE_NUMERIC);
        break;

    default:
        $cell->setValueExplicit($cellValue ?? '', DataType::TYPE_STRING);
        break;
}

The cases are ColumnType cases rather than their backing strings, and that matters: switch compares with ==, and a backed enum is never loosely equal to its own value, so case 'int': would match nothing and send every number to the string branch. The two numeric types are INT and DECIMAL - there is no FLOAT case on the enum.

Everything else - text, dates, booleans, and every other ColumnType - is written as TYPE_STRING. A null becomes 0 in a numeric column and '' everywhere else.

A real run over three columns and two rows, the second one carrying null in both numeric cells and an ordinary string in the text cell:

phpoffice/phpspreadsheet 3.10.7

cell   column type  cell data type         value
A1     header       DataType::TYPE_STRING  'Name'
B1     header       DataType::TYPE_STRING  'Qty'
C1     header       DataType::TYPE_STRING  'Total'
A2     TEXT         DataType::TYPE_STRING  'Widget'
B2     INT          DataType::TYPE_NUMERIC 3
C2     DECIMAL      DataType::TYPE_NUMERIC 10.5
A3     TEXT         DataType::TYPE_STRING  'Gadget'
B3     INT          DataType::TYPE_NUMERIC 0
C3     DECIMAL      DataType::TYPE_NUMERIC 0

Row 1 is the header, written with setValue() rather than setValueExplicit(), so phpspreadsheet infers its type instead of being told one.

testNumericColumnsAreWrittenAsNumbersRatherThanText() in tests/Presentation/Models/Tables/ExcelOutputTest.php is the regression test for the numeric branch, so a workbook whose figures arrive as unsummable text is a test failure rather than something to discover in a spreadsheet.

showOutput()

Builds the spreadsheet, sets the author properties, runs $formatter, sends the download headers and streams the file to php://output through the Xlsx writer with setPreCalculateFormulas(false).

The headers sent, in order:

Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="{filename}.xlsx"
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Cache-Control: max-age=1
Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified: {now} GMT
Cache-Control: cache, must-revalidate
Pragma: public

Cache-Control is sent three times and header() replaces by default, so only cache, must-revalidate survives; the two max-age lines are dead. $filename is interpolated into the Content-Disposition header unescaped - keep it to values you generate, never a request parameter, or a newline in it splits the response.

There is no ob_end_clean() before the write, so anything already echoed - a stray blank line after a ?>, a warning or a var_dump() left in a $exportKey closure - lands in the file and corrupts the archive.

A download route

The generator needs the same table the HTML view uses, minus the pagination, since an export is normally the whole result set:

<?php

public static function export($filterData = '', $sortData = '')
{
    $table = new SQLTable(self::columns(), '/admin/users/');
    $table->initData($filterData, $sortData, null);
    $table->sqlFilter->prepareQueries();

    $sql = 'SELECT * FROM users u'
        . $table->sqlFilter->querySql()
        . $table->sqlSort->sortQuery();
    $rows = Db::fetchAll($sql, $table->sqlFilter->params());
    $table->setRows($rows);

    $output = new Excel($table);
    $output->filename = 'users';
    $table->outputGenerator = $output;
    $table->showOutput();
}

Passing null as the third argument of initData() skips the Pagination and SQLPagination objects, which the Excel generator never touches. It reads the rows through getRows(), so they must have been set.