3 Steps To Display Excel As HTML In PHP

Welcome to a quick tutorial on how to read an Excel file and display it in HTML. So you have a report or log file in the Excel file format, and want to display it on an HTML website? Sadly, that is not possible with PHP out-of-the-box.

Yes, and it is actually not that difficult – Read on for an example!

 

 

TLDR – QUICK SLIDES

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

QUICK NOTES

• A copy of PHPSpreadSheet is not included in the zip file – Please download the latest version by yourself.

If you spot a bug, feel free to comment below. I try to answer short questions too, but it is one person versus the entire world… If you need answers urgently, please check out my list of websites to get help with programming.

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Click here to download all the example source code, I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

 

 

STEP 1) DOWNLOAD PHPSPREADSHEET

As in the introduction above, PHP does not support the Excel file format natively. We need to use the PHPSpreadSheet library to open and read Excel files. You can do a direct pull from GitHub, but their folder structure is a mystery and I can’t figure out how it works either… So the easier way is to:

• Download and install a package manager called Composer.
• Open the command prompt (or terminal), and navigate to your project folder cd YOUR-HTTP-FOLDER.
• Run composer require phpoffice/phpspreadsheet.

That’s all, Composer will automatically download the latest version of PHPSpreadSheet into the vendor/ folder, and we can easily use it with require "vendor/autoload.php".

 

STEP 2) DUMMY EXCEL FILE

For this example, we will use the following simple dummy Excel:

Name	Email
Joa Doe	joa@doe.com
Job Doe	job@doe.com
Joe Doe	joe@doe.com
Jon Doe	jon@doe.com
Joy Doe	joy@doe.com

 

 

STEP 3) READ EXCEL & OUTPUT HTML

<table><?php
// (A) PHPSPREADSHEET TO LOAD EXCEL FILE
require "vendor/autoload.php";
$reader = new \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Reader\Xlsx();
$spreadsheet = $reader->load("2-demo.xlsx");
$worksheet = $spreadsheet->getActiveSheet();
 
// (B) LOOP THROUGH ROWS OF CURRENT WORKSHEET
foreach ($worksheet->getRowIterator() as $row) {
  // (B1) READ CELLS
  $cellIterator = $row->getCellIterator();
  $cellIterator->setIterateOnlyExistingCells(false);
 
  // (B2) OUTPUT HTML
  echo "<tr>";
  foreach ($cellIterator as $cell) { echo "<td>". $cell->getValue() ."</td>"; }
  echo "</tr>";
}
?></table>

Lastly, all that’s left is to use the library to read the Excel file and output it in HTML.

 

EXTRA) READING MULTIPLE WORKSHEETS

<?php
// (A) PHPSPREADSHEET TO LOAD EXCEL FILE
require "vendor/autoload.php";
$reader = new \PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Reader\Xlsx();
$spreadsheet = $reader->load("2-demo.xlsx");
 
// (B) COUNT NUMBER OF WORKSHEETS
$allsheets = $spreadsheet->getSheetCount();
 
// (C) LOOP THROUGH ALL WORKSHEETS
for ($i=0; $i<$allsheets; $i++) {
  // (C1) GET WORKSHEET
  $worksheet = $spreadsheet->getSheet($i);
 
  // (C2) LOOP THROUGH ROWS OF CURRENT WORKSHEET
  foreach ($worksheet->getRowIterator() as $row) {
    // (C3) READ CELLS
    $cellIterator = $row->getCellIterator();
    $cellIterator->setIterateOnlyExistingCells(false);
    foreach ($cellIterator as $cell) { echo $cell->getValue() ."<br>"; }
  }
}

Lastly, this is kind of an extra – Yes, we can also loop through multiple worksheets. Read their documentation if you want to learn more. Links below.

 

 

 

CELLS WITH FORMULA

Take note that PHPSpreadsheet will not evaluate formulas. Just do a “convert formula to calculated values” in Excel, and save it as a separate spreadsheet first.

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

• PHPSpreadSheet Documentation

 

TUTORIAL VIDEO

 

INFOGRAPHIC CHEAT SHEET