Create Excel file from existing rendered view in Symfony - excel

Question

I have a controller that renders up a template file (twig) with some forms and a table response.
I need to export to an Excel file that table response.
Is there a way to do that using Symfony, jQuery or Javascript?
I want to avoid using https://github.com/liuggio/ExcelBundle for which I need to recreate the objects.
I already have them created as they are used in twigs.

Answer 1

You can create an HTML table using Twig (using Twig is not necessary) and then save the output as an Excel file (.xls). You can use simple CSS in a <style> tag and in inline styles. For example:
<style>
.last {
color: red;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Age</th>
<th style="font-style: italic">Country</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
{% for row in data %}
<tr>
<td>row.name</td>
<td>row.age</td>
<td>row.country</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
<tr class="last">
<td colspan="3">This last row is red</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
When you open the file in Excel, you probably get a message saying:
The file you are trying to open file.xls is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?
There might be a workaround for this but I'm not sure.
This approach is simple and doesn't use any dependencies so it might be good enough for you if you don't need a very complex Excel file.
There are many resources with more information about this. See for example: How can I export tables to excel from a webpage.