Laravel 5 - Download Excel file of a View - excel

Question

I'm working on adding an export/downloading feature to a Laravel 5 application. I found the Laravel-Excel library (http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs), which seems perfect -- ideally, I will be able to take a Laravel View or html and make a downloadable Excel file.
So far, I've gotten the creation and storage to work. I can create an Excel file, and it's okay (it's the right data and View), and on the server in storage/exports/ I see "Report.xls" - which is right save path. The issue I'm having is I cannot seem to download the file through the browser after creating it.
The Laravel-Excel library has ->download('xls') and ->export('xls') methods, but these only seems to return the raw content, which is visible in the developer's console:
On the right, you can see the file was created and stored as "Report.xls", and presumably the raw content is the right content - but I don't know why it's just spitting raw content into the console. I can open the Report.xls file in Excel, so I know it's not corrupted.
I also tried to use the Laravel 5 Response::download() function and set headers for the download, but it also spit out raw content in the console instead of downloading the file:
The code I'm using is an AJAX call that hits a Controller method, and the controller method just triggers a Service method called "downloadReportFile()":
public function downloadReportFile($requestData, $fileType) {
$configJSON = \Report::loadConfigFile($requestData['reportName']);
$today = Carbon::today()->format('Y-m-d');
$FileViewdata = array(
'config' => $configJSON,
'html' => $requestData['report_html']
);
\Excel::create("Report", function($excel) use ($FileViewdata) {
$excel->setTitle($FileViewdata['config']['title']);
$excel->setDescription($FileViewdata['config']['description']);
$excel->sheet("page 1", function($sheet) {
$sheet->loadView("reports.sample");
});
})->store('xls', storage_path('exports')); // ->export('xls');
$report_excelFilepath = storage_path('exports') . "/Report.xls";
return response()->download($report_excelFilepath, "Report.xls", [
'Content-Type' => 'application/vnd.ms-excel',
'Content-Disposition' => "attachment; filename='Report.xls'"
]);
}
The View being made into the Excel file is a simple table - the same table as in the screenshots. Here's the template/HTML of the View:
<div class="container full-width-container">
<link href="http://192.168.33.10/css/reports.css" rel="stylesheet">
<div id="results" class="row">
<div class="col-xs-12">
<h2 class="report-title">Active Products </h2>
<br>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-xs-12">
<div class="table-responsive report-component" name="table" template="table">
<table id="report-table" class="table table-striped table-bordered table-hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<td class="report-table-th">ENGINE</td>
<td class="report-table-th">PRODUCT COUNT</td>
<td class="report-table-th">PRODUCT PRICE</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="results-cell">
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>Meows</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>1,234</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>781230.00</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr class="results-cell">
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>Paws</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>10,777</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>3919823.00</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr class="results-cell">
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>Meow Mobile</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>177</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>334323.00</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr class="results-cell">
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>Tails Cloud</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>335</p>
</td>
<td class="report-table-cell">
<p>378918923.00</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Does anyone see what I might be missing to download an XLS file?
Thanks for your time!
EDIT
After doing some more research, it seems that my original workflow for downloading -- using an AJAX call to trigger -- is part of the problem. For example Download a file from Servlet using Ajax talks about AJAX storing results in JavaScript memory, which would explain why I get content in my console and not a file.

Answer 1

Try to add code below before Excel::create():
ob_end_clean();
ob_start();
Example code:
ob_end_clean();
ob_start();
Excel::create($filename, function($excel) use($records, $sheetname, $data) {}
This works for me.