Re: export to excel in CGI

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Re^2: export to excel in CGI by stonecolddevin (Parson) on Sep 05, 2009 at 21:25 UTC
I'd say CSV is probably the best in terms of portability. Excel reads these just fine. +1 to you sir.	[reply]
Re^3: export to excel in CGI by jmcnamara (Monsignor) on Sep 08, 2009 at 16:15 UTC
I'd say CSV is probably the best in terms of portability. The files produced by Spreadsheet::WriteExcel are just as portable as CSV files. In addition they can provide features that CSV files cannot such as multiple worksheets, formatting, merged ranges, printing options and embedded images to name a few. -- John.	[reply]
Re^2: export to excel in CGI by jmcnamara (Monsignor) on Sep 08, 2009 at 16:24 UTC
I've seen cases in the past where the Excel file to download was actually a CSV. This is much easier to generate than a real Excel file. It can actually be quite tricky to generate a CSV file that Excel will read. Especially if your data contains commas, quotes, newlines or other significant entities. Normally it isn't something that should be attempted without a module such as Text::CSV_XS. In which case it is just as easy to use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel and produce a real Excel file. -- John.	[reply]
Re^3: export to excel in CGI by gwadej (Chaplain) on Sep 08, 2009 at 18:16 UTC
For a simple numeric table, CSV is not particularly hard (no escapes or quotes needed). In the general case, I agree, a CSV module would be preferred. I vaguely remember problems getting Spreadsheet::WriteExcel installed on a system a few years ago. Which is why I suggested an alternate approach. G. Wade	[reply]