output an excel file

I need to create a couple of Excel files and output the results. The first use PHPExcel and works great




   ...

        $sheet1->setCellValue('B' . $row, 'Date:');

    }

    $objPHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0);


// Redirect output to a client web browser (Excel5)

    header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');

    header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="TradeDirectivesForm.xls"');

    header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');

// If you're serving to IE 9, then the following may be needed

    header('Cache-Control: max-age=1');


// If you're serving to IE over SSL, then the following may be needed

    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, 'Excel5');

    $objWriter->save('php://output');


    // Once we have finished using the library, give back the

    // power to Yii...

    // spl_autoload_register(array('YiiBase', 'autoload'));


    Yii::app()->end();



The second spreadsheet uses macros and PHPexcel can’t handle that. So I create it with perl Excel Writer. That creates the file correctly but I can’t get it to download. No amount of figdeting with headers or ob_* made a difference, it displays raw text gook. Is there a simple way sending an excel to a user? I could put the file somewhere else. How can I download it so that it knows it is an xlsm? emailing seems to work as a last resort.




private function perlExcel()

{

    // perl excel writer supports macros, phpexcel doesn't

    $x = exec("/usr/bin/perl (PATH)/protected/extensions/hramacro.pl 2>&1");

    // var_dump($x); die;

    $file =  (PATH)/protected/extensions/macros.xlsm";


    ob_start();

    //Prepare the headers

    header('Content-Description: File Transfer');

    // header('Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet');

    header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12');

    // header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');

    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="macros.xlsm"');

    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');

    header('Expires: 0');

    header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');

    header('Pragma: public');

    //Header added after the file was created to be able to check its size

    header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));


    // var_dump(headers_list());

    // var_dump(headers_sent());

    // Clean the buffer, read the file so that the user sees/downloads it, then remove the file.

    ob_end_flush();

    ob_end_clean();

    readfile($file);

    usleep(50000);// delay minimum of .05 seconds to allow ie to flush to screen


    // $form = ob_get_clean();

    //echo $form;

    // $this->renderText($form, false);

    // unlink($file);

    // $this->redirect(array('employer/index'));

    Yii::app()->end();

}