Laravel excel from array

Published: Apr 11, 2021 by C.S. Rhymes

Sometimes you need to get data out of your Laravel app so it can be analysed. There are many ways of doing this, such as exporting rows from the database, or using a package such as Laravel Excel, but this example will utilise Laravel Resource Collections.

In this example we are going to create an export of User information into Excel using Laravel Resource Collection and Spatie’s simple excel package. Laravel Resources are normally used to transform your data for use in an API, but you can also create an array from the resource for use in our export.

The users table has been updated so a user belongs to a company. The companies table has a name for the company in this example.

// App/Models/User.php

public function company()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(AppModelsCompany::class, 'company_id', 'id');
}

Creating the User Resource

To create the user resource we can use the artisan command:

php artisan make:resource UserResource

We can then specify the data we want to include for each user. We will add the name, email and the company name.

<?php

namespace AppHttpResources;

use IlluminateHttpResourcesJsonJsonResource;

class UserResource extends JsonResource
{
    /**
     * Transform the resource into an array.
     *
     * @param  IlluminateHttpRequest  $request
     * @return array
     */
    public function toArray($request)
    {
        return [
           'name' => $this->name,
           'email' => $this->email,
           'company' => $this->company->name,
        ];
    }
}

Converting the User Resource to an array

When you return the UserResource it will provide you with a json response with the users within the data key. This is perfect for use with an API.

return UserResource::collection(User::get());

Each user is listed with their name, email and company. The keys are what we defined in the UserResource toArray() method so if we wanted to add additional data, for example such as a company phone number that is added in future, then we can update the UserResource and the results will be updated accordingly.

{
    "data": [
        {
            "name": "Zechariah Olson DDS",
            "email": "dreynolds@example.net",
            "company": "Boyle Ltd"
        }
    ]
}

We can modify this statement slightly to provide an array of just the user data we need without the data key by using the resolve() method.

return UserResource::collection(User::get())->resolve();

We can also update the query from User::get() to User::cursor() to return a lazy collection and help reduce the amount of memory when we have many users to export. Cursor allows us to only load the current model we are iterating over, rather than loading all models at once.

return UserResource::collection(User::cursor())->resolve();

Exporting to Excel

Now we are ready to make use of the Simple Excel package from Spatie to convert our array into an Excel file.

composer require spatie/simple-excel

The simple excel package provides a writer to help us easily create an excel file using SimpleExcelWriter::create() but since the file could be very large if our Laravel app has numerous users we can use the SimpleExcelWriter::streamDownload() method instead to allow us to stream the download directly to the browser.

Once we have our writer instance we can add rows of data to the file using the ->addRows() method which expects an array. This is where we pass in our UserResource, with the resolve method so it is converted into an array.

Finally we add ->toBrowser() to return the response to the browser and allow the file to download.

// App/Controllers/UserController.php

public function export()
{
    return SimpleExcelWriter::streamDownload('users-export.xlsx')
        ->addRows(
            UserResource::collection(User::cursor())
                ->resolve()
        )
        ->toBrowser();
}

Other possibilities

Once you have created the resource you can reuse it as it was originally intended as an API response, but you could also use it with another Spatie package called array to xml to convert your array into an XML file instead of a CSV or Excel file.

Photo by Matt Bango from StockSnap

If you have a large number of records stored in a database, it could be useful to share that data as a different format. This article will go through exporting the data from a database into a spreadsheet that can be an .xls/.xlsx file for use with spreadsheet software, or as a .csv so it can be read by a large number of software. I will also go through exporting an array or object to a spreadsheet.

To start off, you’ll need a laravel project. Do note that this article will presume a reasonable knowledge of laravel.
Then you’ll need to install the Excel plugin, which you can get from here: http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs .
You’ll also need some data in a database, or in an array or object.

So to start off, I’ll demonstrate how an entire table of values can be exported to a .xlsx or .csv file.
Beginning in the controller, you’ll need to import the Excel plugin by adding 
use MaatwebsiteExcelFacadesExcel;  to the top of the file.
Then you’ll need a function for this process, and within that we can get down to exporting our table. In the example I’m demonstrating, I will be exporting a table of user data. You should be able to simply just replace the name of the table/variable.

The first step is to collect the data from the table:

$users = User::all();

Next, you’ll need to open the function that builds the spreadsheet, declaring the file name (in this case, users), referencing the Excel plugin, and passing in the $users array:

Excel::create('users', function ($excel) use ($users) {

Within this function, we build the spreadsheet by specifying the name of the sheet, and passing in the $users array:

$excel->sheet('sheet1', function ($sheet) use ($users) {
    $sheet->fromArray($users);
});

This process with creating the sheet can be repeated within this function if you intend to create multiple sheets; although you would need to change the name of the sheet for each one you create.

Finally, you just close out the function with your method of exporting, which could be 
})->download(‘xlsx’); , or 
})->download(‘csv’); , for example. The use of 
download would send the file to the device of the user accessing the route. This can be replaced with 
->store(‘xlsx’, $storagePath); if you want to store the file on the server in a specific location, just passing in your intended location in place of $storagePath. Another alternative to download and store is 
export.
The file type (.xlsx, .csv, etc.) can be replaced with the file extension you want to download/store the file with, such as .xls, .xlsx, .csv or .pdf.

public function csv()
    {
 
        $users = User::all();
 
        // Generate and return the spreadsheet
        Excel::create('users', function ($excel) use ($users) {
 
            // Build the spreadsheet, passing in the users array
            $excel->sheet('sheet1', function ($sheet) use ($users) {
                $sheet->fromArray($users);
            });
 
        })->download('xlsx');
    }

When it comes to exporting an array or object to a spreadsheet file, the process is largely the same, only the variable you’re working with isn’t from the database, but declared as an array. Here is an example of the same code as above, but done by assigning data to an array and exporting that array instead of the user table:

public function csv()
    {
 
        $users = User::all();
 
        foreach ($users as $user) {
 
                $userData[] = [
                    'ID' => $user->id,
                    'Name' => $user->name,
                    'Address' => $user->address,
                    'Postcode' => $user->postcode,
                ];
            }
 
        // Generate and return the spreadsheet
        Excel::create('users', function ($excel) use ($userData) {
 
            // Build the spreadsheet, passing in the users array
            $excel->sheet('sheet1', function ($sheet) use ($userData) {
                $sheet->fromArray($userData);
            });
 
        })->download('csv');
    }

This example is filling the array with values from the database but you can also manually input the values, or receive values from a form request.

By doing this using an array created in the function as opposed to just outputting all the data from the database, I can specify the headers in the spreadsheet, and only export the specific fields I want to be included in the spreadsheet. But outputting from an array is the way to go when specifying specific data in the function, or when working with data from a form request. Again, as with the previous example, you can change the final line of the function to specify the file type or change the method of outputting the spreadsheet file, be it pushing the download, storing it on the server, etc.