title: How to export html table to excel using PHPExcel?
body: <p>Because it is hard to deal with different standards among different browsers, I give up trying to export html table using js or jQuery. I wonder if I can POST the table in html back to server and generate an .xls file on the server for user to download.</p>
  
  <p>Now on the server side using PHPExcel, my code is like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$filename = "DownloadReport";
  $table = $_POST['table'];
  
  ini_set('zlib.output_compression','Off'); 
  header("Pragma: public");
  header("Expires: 0");
  header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
  header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
  header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
  //the folowing two lines make sure it is saved as a xls file
  header('Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
  header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.$filename);
  
  $objReader = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createReader('HTML');
  $objPHPExcel = $objReader-&gt;load($table);
  
  $objWriter = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createWriter($objPHPExcel, 'Excel2007');
  $objWriter-&gt;save('php://output');
  
  exit;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is I cannot load html table directly. How can I deal with that?</p>
  
  <p>And one more question is that as I set the headers in php, the file is not downloading when I click the button. Actually I can view all the attributes of Header of the POST response, and also the content of response(in FireBug), which are all correct.</p>