Why am I getting encoding problems with phpspreadsheet?

Question

I'm trying to get a phpspreadsheet hello world code working... Just copied from their examples (that work properly) to a new php. But by navigating it, a corrupted xls files gets created. I think it has something to do with encoding, but my document is pure utf-8 (sublime text), and the code is copied from their working example:

 <?php
  require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

  use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Helper\Sample;
  use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\IOFactory;
  use PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Spreadsheet;

  require_once 'vendor/phpoffice/phpspreadsheet/src/Bootstrap.php';

  $helper = new Sample();
  if ($helper->isCli()) {
      $helper->log('This example should only be run from a Web Browser' . PHP_EOL);

      return;
  }

  // Create new Spreadsheet object
  $spreadsheet = new Spreadsheet();

  // Set document properties
  $spreadsheet->getProperties()->setCreator('Maarten Balliauw')
      ->setLastModifiedBy('Maarten Balliauw')
      ->setTitle('Office 2007 XLSX Test Document')
      ->setSubject('Office 2007 XLSX Test Document')
      ->setDescription('Test document for Office 2007 XLSX, generated using PHP classes.')
      ->setKeywords('office 2007 openxml php')
      ->setCategory('Test result file');

  // Add some data
  $spreadsheet->setActiveSheetIndex(0)
      ->setCellValue('A1', 'Hello')
      ->setCellValue('B2', 'world!')
      ->setCellValue('C1', 'Hello')
      ->setCellValue('D2', 'world!');

  // Miscellaneous glyphs, UTF-8
  $spreadsheet->setActiveSheetIndex(0)
      ->setCellValue('A4', 'Miscellaneous glyphs')
      ->setCellValue('A5', 'éàèùâêîôûëïüÿäöüç');

  // Rename worksheet
  $spreadsheet->getActiveSheet()->setTitle('Simple');

  // Set active sheet index to the first sheet, so Excel opens this as the first sheet
  $spreadsheet->setActiveSheetIndex(0);

  // Redirect output to a client’s web browser (Xls)
  header('Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel');
  header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="01simple.xls"');
  header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');
  // If you're serving to IE 9, then the following may be needed
  header('Cache-Control: max-age=1');

  // If you're serving to IE over SSL, then the following may be needed
  header('Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT'); // Date in the past
  header('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT'); // always modified
  header('Cache-Control: cache, must-revalidate'); // HTTP/1.1
  header('Pragma: public'); // HTTP/1.0

  $writer = IOFactory::createWriter($spreadsheet, 'Xls');
  $writer->save('php://output');
  exit;

What I get is this:

So what? Why?

Answer 1

I had the similar problem with Lithuanian characters. The solution is to open the php file with code as example in EmEditor. In the right bottom corner check the encoding (usually if I create a new php file and add into this file strings with Lithuanian characters the encoding by default will be Baltic) and if it is not UTF-8 without Signature save this file with Encoding: UTF-8 without Signature (this selection will appear in the bottom right corner when the Save As function will be executed).

Answer 2

Maybe these lines can work for you, put them at the beginning of the file.

ini_set('default_charset', '');
mb_http_output('pass');
mb_detect_order(["UTF-8"]);