It may not be the cleanest of solutions, but at the moment we do what you're doing with a temp file: create the .XLS file in some random location, then read it back into memory (in the same script) and print it to the client (then, presumably, delete the temp file). This keeps everything in one process, so you can report errors directly to the client (and not bother forking), and also lets you defer printing the headers until you know more about your output (the size, of course, but also if there were any errors as you fetched the data).

That is:

use File::Temp 'tempfile';
use CGI 'header';

my ($fh,$filename) = tempfile();
my $workbook = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new($filename);
do_stuff($workbook);
$fh->seek(0,0);
my $data;
my $size = -z $filename;
$size== $fh->read($data,$size) or bail_the_heck_out(); #CGI::Carp migh
+t help
print header(
    -type=>"application/vnd.ms-excel",
    -content_length=>$size,
    -attachment=>$file, # assuming you set that elsewhere
), $data;
[download]

i'm getting an error for $! as "Resource temporarily Unavailable". I'm trying to write to a file using Spreadsheet::WriteExcel's write(). The $worksheet object is defined at the top of the file, but when I hit the below while loop, it won't write() and puts RTU in the $! variable.

I don't think it's a scoping issue because the $worksheet object is defined well before the while loop. My query for the information that needs to go into the doesn't choke, so I'm not writing with uninitialized variables. Would appreciate your opinion.

# At top of file
my $workbook = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new($target);
my $worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet("Ventus_Networks_Invoice");
my $row = 0;

...

# This is the header row, that prints
 if( $qrv > 0 ) {
       my $mid_header =
$workbook->add_format(%oUpper,%iLeft,%iRight,%greybg,%fBold,%iLower);
       my $mid_theader=
$workbook->add_format(%oUpper,%iLeft,%iRight,%greybg,%fBold,%iLower,%f
+Twrap);
       $worksheet->write($row,0,'Site
Name',$workbook->add_format(%oUpper,%oLeft,%iLower,%iRight,%greybg,%fB
+old));

...
# After headers are printed, print data
 while(my @i = $sth_site->fetchrow_array() ){
           $worksheet->write($row,0,$i[1],

$workbook->add_format(%oLeft,%iRight,%iLower)); # Location ID
# This is where $! is set to "Resource Temporarily Unavailable
[download]

amt.

perlcheat

I'm not all that familiar with the internal workings of S::WE, but that seems very odd. Are you sure the write() call is actually failing? I apologize if that's obvious, but I see from the documentation that it returns 0 on success, and your snippet doesn't include code that reports the error, so it seemed worth checking. Also, I haven't any other ideas at all, unless there's some bizarre issue with the filesystem your temp directory is on—I don't think I've ever seen code that produced that particular error. :-\




---

If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
    --Michael Flanders

I've written many spreadsheets far larger than 242 rows with this module, so unless you are hitting the 7meg point, I'd say the problem is something else.

Your content type looks funny to me, I use

  print "Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel\n";
  print "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=${fn}\n\n";

  my $workbook  = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new("-");
[download]

As to a workaround, the technique I've used for spreadsheets that involve long db queries to build is to fork off the process in the background and email the resulting spreadsheet file to the user.