Laravel-excel: [QUESTION] Memory Hog Issues

[jacobjlandry]

Package version, Laravel version

Laravel 5.2, Maatwebsite Excel 2.1

Expected behavior

Memory footprint on load should be within reason.

Actual behavior

I'm currently working on a project where I'm uploading a 38MB file, it is using around 9GB of system memory just to open the file. This seems a bit extreme. Are there any ways that I can limit the memory usage? I am literally just uploading the data into the database. Chunking returns the exact same usage.

Excel::load($filePath, function($reader) {
// uses 9GB just to get here
});

[jacobjlandry]

Also wanted to note: the file has no calculations or formatting, it's just numerical and textual data.

[denizaygun]

As suggested to others try using raw PHP to read your file (given that it's a csv) or http://csv.thephpleague.com/examples/

Only thing I can offer as it's the solution that I resorted to for myself, hope it helps.

[mcblum]

We're having the same issue. we're running out of memory exporting 8K contacts. The system has 16gb and php has access to all of it, so that's rather unexpected.

[jacobjlandry]

@NmExHunTeRz unfortunately, .xlsx is a requirement in this case.

[kherge]

From the little testing I did, it looks like PHPExcel loads an entire workbook into memory.

Might want to try something like box/spout. It will stream the contents of a workbook, using as little as 2-8 MiB of RAM. Keep in mind though that the large the workbook, the more CPU intensive the process becomes.

[garygreen]

@kherge thanks for the link for Spout, looks like a nice library though although it's a shame that it doesn't seem to support column formatting. I guess loading a template might be an option.

[mcblum]

@garygreen this is open source! if you want it to support column formatting, make it support column formatting :)

[garygreen]

@mcblum Sorry, I don't use Laravel-Excel anymore. Unneeded abstraction with lots of problems so just use PHP Excel directly now. You're welcome to add the column formatting though, if you like 😋