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Integrating Maatwebsite Excel in a Laravel Project

An archived 2019 walkthrough of spreadsheet imports with Laravel and Maatwebsite Excel.

Originally published on Medium on 30 September 2019.

Hey guys, this is my first blog post here. I want to share how to integrate excel in your Laravel project. There are couples of packages out there which provides this functionality but I will be using Maatwebsite Excel for this purpose.

This is a walk-through on how to integrate Maatwebsite Excel in Laravel application, please refer to documentation if you have any concern.

  1. Set Up.
    Package requirement
    - PHP version ^7.0
    - Laravel version ^5.5
    - PhpSpreadsheet version ^1.6.

Download the package in your project by running the code below.

Shell
composer require maatwebsite/excel

However, Maatwebsite\Excel\ExcelServiceProvider is auto-discovered by default but you can do it yourself by Adding to the ServiceProvider in config/app.php

PHP
...
'providers' => [
 /*
 * Package Service Providers…
 */
 Maatwebsite\Excel\ExcelServiceProvider::class
]

The Excel facade is also auto-discovered but you can add it yourself by adding the code below to the facade in config/app.php.

PHP
...
'aliases' => [
 …
 'Excel' => Maatwebsite\Excel\Facades\Excel::class
]

Lastly, to publish the config, run the vendor publish command:

Shell
php artisan vendor:publish - provider="Maatwebsite\Excel\ExcelServiceProvider"

This will create a new config file in the config/excel.php where you can make a lot of changes and configurations.

2. Import
There’s a lot you can do here. Please check the documentation for the available functions. I will be using import to collection here.

i). Import to Collection.
Create an import class in app/Imports by either running this command below

Shell
php artisan make:import MovieImport

or manually by creating Imports directory in app, then ClassNameImport.php (i.e Imports\MovieImport.php) in Imports directory.

PHP
<?php
namespace App\Imports;
use App\Movies;
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\ToCollection;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\WithHeadingRow;
class MoviesImport implements ToCollection, WithHeadingRow
{
    /**
     * @param array $row
     *
     * @return Movies|null
     */
    public function collection(Collection $rows)
    {
        $errorMsg = "";
        DB::beginTransaction();
        
        $i = 1;
        foreach ($rows as $row)
        {
            if ($row['title'] != null)
            {
                $data['title'] = $row['title'];
            }
            else
            {
                $errMsg = "Title is empty on SN $i";
                break;
            }
            //You can validate other values using same steps.
            $data['synopsis'] = $row['synopsis'];
            $data['release_date'] = $row['release_date'];
            if (!Movies::create($data))
            {
                $errMsg = "Error while creating movies";
                break;
            }
            $i++;
        }
        if (!empty($errorMsg))
        {
            DB::rollBack();
            // Rollback in case there is error
            return redirect()->back()->with('error', $errorMsg);
        }
        else
        {
            DB::commit();
            // Commit to database
            return redirect()->back()
                ->with('success', 'Uploaded Successfully');
        }
    }
}

ii). Now create a method in the controller for the import.

PHP
public function bulkMovieUpload(Request $request)
{
   if ($request->hasFile('excel_file')) {
      $data = $request->file('excel_file');
      $data->move(('path'), $data->getClientOriginalName());
      //You can choose to validate file type. e.g csv,xls,xlsx.
      $file_url = ('path').$data->getClientOriginalName());
      Excel::import(new MovieImport, $file_url);
      return back()->with('success', 'Uploaded Successfully!');
   } else {
     return back()->with('error', "File is required");
   }
}

3. Call this through the route

PHP
Route::post('movies/bulkupload', ['as' => 'movies-bulkupload', 'uses' =>'MovieController@bulkMovieUpload']);

This will handle the excel import. I will write a second article on Maatwebsite Excel Export ASAP. If you have any error or issue, please reach out on Twitter @heavykenny or use the comment section. Thanks.

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