Question

I have the following sample line in a CSV file I am generating with PHP. When I cat the file this is what I see:

541787,271561,"04/01/2013 09:26:35",18801872,Many,"PINSTRIPE JACKET",18806821872,75.00,GBP,1,0078,5051916991872

However, when I open this file in MS Excel the “0078” has been changed to “78” – so MS Excel has taken it upon itself to strip the leading zeros. It has also converted the EAN13 number (in Column L) to an exponent.

In terms of the PHP code I am outputting the file to the browser with the following code, which works in principal, but I would like to know if there is a way to control the stripping of the leading zeros with PHP?

// set the headers
header('Content-Type: application/csv');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=_report_' . date('Y-m-d-His') . '.csv');
header('Pragma: no-cache');

echo $report->getCSVOutput();
exit;    

Answer 1

It turns out that with a small tweak (as suggested by the owner) to SimpleExcel this package can handle the stripping of leading zeros.

I am using the code below:

/**
 * get the order data in Microsoft Excel XML format (to be used when output to the browser directly)
 * @return void
 */
public function getExcelXMLOutput() {

    // instantiate new object (will automatically construct the parser & writer type as XML)
    $excel = new SimpleExcel('xml');                    

    // add some data to the writer
    $excel->writer->setData($this->orders);                                                 

    // save the file with specified name
    // and specified target (default to browser)           
    $excel->writer->saveFile('report_' . date('Y-m-d-His'));

}

The code amendment required me to change the XMLWriter class in the addRow method to:

$datatype = is_string($val) ? 'String' : (is_numeric($val) ? 'Number' : 'String');