Question

Iam trying to write an Excel2007 File with Zend Framework and PHPExcel. I know i could increase the PHP Memory Limit.. but is there no other way?

This is my Code so far, it works well with 5000 Rows and 77 Columns but i need 12000 rows 🙂 Memory is set to 128MB

    $cacheMethod = PHPExcel_CachedObjectStorageFactory::cache_to_sqlite;
    PHPExcel_Settings::setCacheStorageMethod($cacheMethod);

    $db = Zend_Db_Table_Abstract::getDefaultAdapter();
    $phpExcel = new PHPExcel();

    // set headers
    $select = $db->select();
    $select->from('IMPORT')->limit(1);
    $data = $select->query()->fetchAll();
    $columns = array_keys($data[0]);
    $phpExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0);
    $colCNT = 1;

    foreach ($columns as $column) {
        $letter = Nc_Utils::getNameFromNumber($colCNT);
        $phpExcel->getActiveSheet()->SetCellValue($letter . '1', $column);
        $colCNT++;
    }

    unset($select);
    unset($data);

    $sql = 'SELECT * FROM IMPORT LIMIT 7000';
    $stmt = $db->query($sql);

    $rowCNT = 2;
    while($rows = $stmt->fetch()){
        $phpExcel->getActiveSheet()->fromArray($rows, null, 'A'.$rowCNT);
        $rowCNT++;
    }  

    unset($rowCNT);
    unset($select);
    unset($db);

    // MEMORY USAGE = 4 MB!

    $phpExcelWrite = new PHPExcel_Writer_Excel2007($phpExcel);
    $phpExcelWrite->setUseDiskCaching(true);
    $phpExcelWrite->save(str_replace('.php', '.xls', __FILE__));

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted
(tried to allocate 13878925 bytes) in
/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/phpexcel/library/PHPExcel/Shared/XMLWriter.php
on line 102

Answer 1

I have tried to use PhpExcel but found out the same problems as you.
I’ve tried all the proposals to reduce memory consumption (the link Klinky posted in his answer) but got only 25-30% improvement. I even thought about creating CSV output instead of excel.

Now I am using PEAR’s Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer and it works fine for me with roughly the same amount of data (11k rows 62 columns), though it takes quite some time to generate the file.

It is not as powerful as PhpExcel, but as I see in your example you are not using it to style cells and write functions, right?

Example:

$workbook = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer();
$workbook->send($filename . '.xls');
$workbook->setVersion(8); // excel 8
// Create worksheet
$worksheet =& $workbook->addWorksheet('submissions');
$worksheet->setInputEncoding('UTF-8');
// Write some data on Sheet 1
$row = 0;
$worksheet->write($row, 0, 'Poster #ID');
$worksheet->write($row, 1, 'Surname');
$worksheet->write($row, 2, 'Firstname');
$worksheet->write($row, 3, 'Country');
$worksheet->write($row, 4, 'E-mail');
$worksheet->write($row, 5, 'All authors');
$worksheet->write($row, 6, 'Institutions');
$worksheet->write($row, 7, 'Abstract topic');
$worksheet->write($row, 8, 'Abstract title');
foreach ($records as $rec_id => $rec_data) {
    $row++;
    $worksheet->write($row, 0, 'P-' . $rec_data['id']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 1, $rec_data['submitter_surname']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 2, $rec_data['submitter_firstname']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 3, $rec_data['submitter_country']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 4, $rec_data['submitter_email']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 5, $rec_data['authors']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 6, $rec_data['institutions']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 7, $rec_data['abstract_topic']);
    $worksheet->write($row, 8, $rec_data['abstract_title']);
}
$workbook->close(); // output