What is the difference between creating a CSV file and an Excel file using PHP?

Creating a CSV file using PHP involves writing data in a comma-separated format, while creating an Excel file involves generating a file in a format that Excel can read, such as XLSX. To create a CSV file, you simply need to write data with commas separating each value. To create an Excel file, you may need to use a library like PHPExcel to generate the file in the correct format. 

// Creating a CSV file
$csvData = "Name, Age, City\nJohn, 25, New York\nJane, 30, Los Angeles";
file_put_contents('data.csv', $csvData);

// Creating an Excel file using PHPExcel library
require 'PHPExcel.php';

$objPHPExcel = new PHPExcel();
$objPHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0)
            ->setCellValue('A1', 'Name')
            ->setCellValue('B1', 'Age')
            ->setCellValue('C1', 'City')
            ->setCellValue('A2', 'John')
            ->setCellValue('B2', 25)
            ->setCellValue('C2', 'New York')
            ->setCellValue('A3', 'Jane')
            ->setCellValue('B3', 30)
            ->setCellValue('C3', 'Los Angeles');

$objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($objPHPExcel, 'Excel2007');
$objWriter->save('data.xlsx');

Keywords

CSV Excel PHP file creation data manipulation

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