How to make general purpose collection export using Laravel Excel

Making all export class for each collection export is pain to work. Lets make a general purpose collection export using Laravel Excel package.

Install Laravel Excel Package

composer require maatwebsite/excel

If composer require fails on Laravel 9 because of the simple-cache dependency, you will have to specify the psr/simple-cache version as ^2.0 in your composer.json to satisfy the PhpSpreadsheet dependency. You can install both at the same time as:

composer require psr/simple-cache:^2.0 maatwebsite/excel

Create CollectionExport collection export class

Create CollectionExport class using php artisan command

php artisan make:export CollectionExport

Open App\Exports\CollectionExport.php file and add ShouldAutoSize and WithHeadings interface to make result file more readable.

• ShouldAutoSize : This interface make column width set automatically based on it’s content
• WithHeadings : This interface make adding header row

And implement code like below:

<?php

namespace App\Exports;

use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\FromCollection;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\ShouldAutoSize;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\WithHeadings;

class CollectionExport implements FromCollection, ShouldAutoSize, WithHeadings
{
    protected $source;

    public function __construct($source)
    {
        $this->source = $source;
    }

    /**
    * @return \Illuminate\Support\Collection
    */
    public function collection()
    {
        return $this->source;
    }

    public function headings(): array
    {
        // Use collection key to set header
        return array_keys($this->source->first()->toArray());
    }
}

Use CollectionExport class in controller

public function export(Request $request)
{
    $data = User::all();

    return Excel::download(new CollectionExport($data), "users.xlsx");
}