Tricks & Hacks

To create or edit Excel spreadsheets using pure PHP, we will use the PHPExcel library, which can read and write many spreadsheet formats, including xls, xlsx, ods and csv. Before we continue, double-check that you have PHP 5.2 or higher on your server and that the following PHP extensions are installed: php_zip, php_xml and php_gd2.

When resizing and cropping images, many popular PHP packages break the GIF animation and save it as a static image. However, it is possible to resize and crop image while keeping the animation intact. In PHP, this can be achieved by using the ImageMagick extension.