Question

This is right now I am using.

$mimeType = 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet';
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: ' . $mimeType);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($type.'.xlsx'));
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');   
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Pragma: public');
print "$header\n$data";
exit;

$header variable contains the header row of excel to be generated and looks like this

$header= "Business_Name\tBusiness_Type\tType";

separated by \t

and $data contains rows to be generated under header columns. They are also separated by \t and a row is terminated by \n.

With the current setup file is downloaded but it is not opening with ms excel and showing this message.

Excel cannot open the file “file name”
because the file format or file
extension is not valid. Verify that
the file format has not been corrupted
and that the file extension matches
the format of the file.

What header should be sent to server? or how do I generate that file?

Answer 1

What you have is actually a CSV file. Depending on your OS, your browser and your Excel version, then the browser will differently let you or not let your open the extensions CSV, XLS XLSX with the Excel software.

If you do want to have your data opened with Excel, then you can merge the data with an Excel template using OpenTBS. Use version 1.6.0 (or greater) which is currently in Release Candidate because it brings major facilities for Excel files.

In your title there is “no excel library PHP”. I don’t know why you have this specification but OpenTBS is not exactly an Excel library. It’s a PHP tool for merging OpenOffice and Ms Office documents using templates.