Re^2: export to excel in CGI

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.

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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]