Integrating Maatwebsite Excel in Laravel Project.

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.

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

...
'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.

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

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

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

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
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.

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

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.