in reply to Re: Re: Creating downloadable files on the fly
in thread Creating downloadable files on the fly

I've knocked up a quick test: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

package Apache::ExcelTest;

use Apache::Constants qw(:common);
use Apache::Request;
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

sub handler{
  my $r = Apache::Request->new(shift);

  print "Content-disposition: attachment;filename=test.xls\n";
  print "Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel\n\n";

  tie *XLS => 'Apache';
  binmode(*XLS);
  my $workbook  = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new(\*XLS);
  my $worksheet = $workbook->addworksheet();
  $worksheet->write("A1","Hello, World");
  $workbook->close;
}

1;

[download]
and here is the Apache config to go with it: 
<Location /exceltest>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::ExcelTest
PerlSendHeader on
</Location>

[download]
To see it in action, go to http://jonallen.info/exceltest.

Hope this points you in the right direction.

JJ

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Creating downloadable files on the fly
by Helter (Chaplain) on Oct 09, 2002 at 14:18 UTC
    I was playing with writing a spreadsheet to the screen, and this code works:
    #!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use CGI qw/:standard/;
  
if( param())
{

    print header(-type=>'application/vnd.ms-excel',
                 -attachment=>'test.xls');
  use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;
  
  my $workbook = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new('-');
  my $worksheet = $workbook->addworksheet(param('color'));
  
  
  $worksheet->write(0,0,param('name'));
  $worksheet->write(0,1,"dere");
  $worksheet->write(0,2,"be jammin");
  $worksheet->write(1,0,"Monkey");
  $worksheet->write(2,0,param('words'));
  
  $workbook->close();

} else {
  print header,
  start_html('A Simple Example'),
  h1('A Simple Example'),
  start_form,
  "What's your name? ",textfield('name'),p,
  "What's the combination?", p,
  checkbox_group(-name=>'words',
                 -values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
                 -defaults=>['eenie','minie']), p,
  "What's your favorite color? ",
  popup_menu(-name=>'color',
                   -values=>['red','green','blue','chartreuse']),p,
  submit,
  end_form,
  hr;

}

    [download]
    Hope this helps! Update: The above code was pretty much cut'n'pasted from cgi
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Creating downloadable files on the fly
by Anonymous Monk on Oct 10, 2002 at 10:45 UTC
    I still get exactly the same result. On my local machine the excel data appears in text format. It worked from your URL though. I have checked the MIME headers supported by my browser and vnd-ms.excel is listed: 
    GET /HTest HTTP/1.1
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, applicati
+on/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/msword, *
+/*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-gb
Connection: Keep-Alive
Host: localhost
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/plain

    [download]
    Do I need to install libapreq to get this to work? I haven't yet managed to get it to compile (it tells me I don't have mod_perl installed!)
[reply]
[d/l]
      Well if you don't have mod_perl installed (as stated in the original question), you won't be writing code as a handler, and also won't be tying the output to Apache.

      Try this in a 'normal' CGI script: 

      #!/usr/bin/perl -w

print "Content-disposition: attachment;filename=test.xls\n";
print "Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel\n\n";

binmode(STDOUT);
my $workbook  = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new('-');
my $worksheet = $workbook->addworksheet();
$worksheet->write("A1","Hello, World");
$workbook->close;

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Creating downloadable files on the fly
by surfmonkey (Acolyte) on Oct 10, 2002 at 15:08 UTC
    OK, I do have mod_perl installed. I have now installed libapreq and the demo works. Thanks. I had to change the makefile and hard code the paths to the includes and libs MyConfig wasn't picking them up!!. So now I can generate Excel files on the fly from a handler, but I don't want to write a new handler for every file. How do I pass values onto the handler so that it can acces the correct database and dataset? I've never played with handlers before so this is completely new territory for me.
[reply]
      Like this: 
      use Apache::Request;

sub handler {
  my $r = Apache::Request->new(shift);
  my $test = $r->param('test');

  # your code here...
}

      [download]
      The $r->param method handles both GET and POST requests, similar to using CGI.pm.

      I would recommend you get a copy of The Eagle Book - this will tell you everything you need to know.

      JJ

[reply]
[d/l]
        OK, I have now picked up a copy of the Eagle book and the mod_perl developers cookbook. Thanks for all your help, it's really appreciated. S'monkey
[reply]

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