Question

i would like to export excel to specific folder where user can save it wherever they want. currently i already succeed with export to excel but i test it locally and it downloaded to my local server folder. i hope someone can help me. thank you.

$id=$_GET['id'];
$excel=new ExcelWriter("./excel/company".$id.".xls");
if($excel==false)   
echo $excel->error;
$myArr=array("NO", "COMPANY", "ADDRESS1", "ADDRESS2", "ADDRESS3", "POSTCODE", "CITY", "STATE", "PHONE NO", "FAX NO", "EMAIL", "WEBSITE");
$excel->writeLine($myArr);
$qry=mysql_query(" SELECT organizations.*, states.state, cities.city FROM organizations, states, cities WHERE idOrg='$id' AND organizations.state_id=states.idState AND organizations.city_id=cities.idCity");
if($qry!=false)
{
    $i=1;
    while($res=mysql_fetch_array($qry))
    {
        $myArr=array($i,$res['companyName'], $res['add1'], $res['add2'], $res['add3'], $res['postcode'], $res['city'],$res['state'], $res['phoneNo'], $res['faxNo'], $res['email'], $res['website']);
        $excel->writeLine($myArr);
        $i++;
    }
}

Answer 1

Your question title suggests that you are under the assumption that, using PHP, you can save an Excel file on the client’s PC. Not exactly. You can save it to your local webserver (as you’ve already found out). But to transfer that to the client PC, you should offer it up as a download.

Once the file is done being written (as you are already doing), present the user with a link to the file on your server. They will then be able to choose where it should be downloaded on their PC.

Another possibility would be to write out the excel file data as the HTTP response and set the Content-Type header to something like application/vnd.ms-excel (or whatever is correct for your file type) and a Content-Disposition of attachment (example).

I’m not familiar with ExcelWriter, so I don’t know if it has some kind of a dump function or not. Perhaps after you write out the file you just do something like this:

header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=company'. $id .'.xls');

echo file_get_contents('./excel/company'. $id .'.xls');