Use Axios to get and save an Excel file

Question

I am using react and axios to do a POST to a php service that will return a .xlsx file. The .xlsx file is created properly on the server, but during transit back it gets corrupted, through the Chrome inspector the data seems to be getting converted to a string and many characters are getting changed as a result. Is there a way to do this? Things I have tried:

Headers on request

'Accept': 'application/octet-stream',
'responseType': 'blob',

With the response object

fileDownload(new Blob([response.data]), 'report.xlsx');

Alternatively with the response object

const url = window.URL.createObjectURL(new Blob([response.data]));
const link = document.createElement('a');
link.href = url;
link.setAttribute('download', 'file.xlsx');
link.click();

No matter what I try it seems to be getting corrupted. On the server side I have the following PHP code:

$response = new Stream();
$response->setStream(fopen($tempFilePath, 'r'));
$response->setStatusCode(200);
$response->setStreamName($tempFilePath);
$responseHeaders = new Headers();
$responseHeaders->addHeaders(array(
    'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename='report.xlsx',
    'Content-Type' => 'application/octet-stream',
    'Content-Length' => filesize($tempFilePath),
    'Expires' => '@0', 
    'Cache-Control' => 'must-revalidate',
    'Pragma' => 'public'
));
$response->setHeaders($responseHeaders);
return $response;

Solution 1

Try removing responseType from the headers and add it directly into your options object that you pass into axios:

axios({
    method:'GET',
    url: '[your_url_to_get_file]',      
    responseType: 'blob', 
    headers: { your headers }
})

On top of that, I would try using application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet as your content-type, instead of octect-stream. I've never tried octect-stream but the one I mentioned has always worked for me with .xlsx files.

For reference about MIME types see here.

Solution 2

const axios = require('axios');
const fs = require('fs');

const getXLS = () => {
    return axios.request({
    responseType: 'arraybuffer',
    url: 'https://drive.google.com/ft7P9FAQ/view?usp=sharing',
    method: 'get',
    headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'blob',
    },
  }).then((result) => {
      const outputFilename = 'xyzzzz.xls';
      fs.writeFileSync(outputFilename, result.data);
      return outputFilename;
    });
  }

  getXLS();