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How can I export tables to excel from a webpage
EDIT: Just to clarify, it does not HAVE to be an Excel file, but it has to be a spreadsheet file which is able to be opened/edited in Excel.. So whatever would accomplish this most easily is the answer I seek 🙂
I need to convert an HTML table to some sort of downloadable spreadsheet (preferably for Office Excel). I can do this in jQuery, but would prefer to do it in plain JavaScript. I’ve searched around and have found a lot of info about doing the reverse (spreadsheet->html), but I need to create a downloadble spreadsheet file of a dynamically built table. Any points for how I could accomplish this would be much appreciated! 🙂
Don’t do this in JavaScript. You need to do this in a server-side scripting language like PHP.
The easiest way to prepare data for importing into a spreadsheet is going to be creating a CSV file. Here’s an example CSV file which will open fine in Excel:
CSV files are just plain text, with the fields separated by commas, so they are easy to create. If the data in your fields needs to contain commas, double quote marks, newlines, or a few other special cases, then things get more tricky.
If you really want to create an Excel-format spreadsheet, this is pretty difficult and you’re going to want the help of a library. Here’s how I would find a PHP Excel library: http://google.com/search?q=php+create+excel+spreadsheet