I was successfully able to serve up dynamic Excel files via the Apache Web Server to a web browser about a year ago. I went digging up through my file system and found this snippet. This is meant for a *NIX box, by the way - this might cause a problem when trying to write the temporary file on Win32 boxes.

use strict;

use CGI qw(header);
use POSIX;
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

my $tmp_file = tmpnam();

{
my $workbook  = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new($tmp_file) or die;
my $worksheet = $workbook->addworksheet() or die;
my $format    = $workbook->addformat() or die;

$format->set_bold();
$format->set_color('red');
$format->set_align('center');

$worksheet->write(0, 0, "Hi Excel!");
$worksheet->write(1, 0, 1.2345);
$worksheet->write(2, 0, "Hi Excel!", $format);
}

open(FH,$tmp_file) or die;

print header(-type=>'application/vnd.ms-excel');
print while <FH>;

unlink $tmp_file;
[download]

A really nice feature of the Apache web server is being able to specify your own extensions for CGI scripts. By adding this line to your <Directory> directive:

AddHandler cgi-script .xls

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)