Laravel Excel Export with Merged Cells and Custom Column Formatting

This guide explains how to build a Laravel export class for generating Excel files with merged cells and custom formatting using the Maatwebsite\Excel package.

The core class extends StringValueBinder and implements several concerns such as FromCollection , ShouldAutoSize , WithColumnFormatting , WithCustomValueBinder , WithStrictNullComparison , and WithEvents . It stores the data rows, merge‑cell definitions, column names, and format mappings as private properties.

public function __construct($row = null, $data = null, $mergeCell = null, $columnName = null, $formatNumber = []) { $this->row = $row; $this->data = $data; $this->mergeCell = $mergeCell; $this->columnName = $columnName; $this->formatNumber = $formatNumber; }

The collection() method prepares the data for export, iterating over rows to build a two‑dimensional array that matches the header keys, and returns a Laravel collection.

public function registerEvents(): array { if ($this->mergeCell && $this->columnName) { return [ AfterSheet::class => function(AfterSheet $event) { foreach ($this->columnName as $column) { foreach ($this->mergeCell as $key => $value) { $event->sheet->getDelegate()->mergeCells($column . $key . ':' . $column . $value); } } } ]; } return []; }

The columnFormats() method defines the number format for specified columns to prevent scientific notation for long numbers.

public function columnFormats(): array { $formatNumber = []; foreach ($this->formatNumber as $column) { $formatNumber[$column] = \\PhpOffice\\PhpSpreadsheet\\Style\\NumberFormat::FORMAT_TEXT; } return $formatNumber; }

Finally, the export is triggered with a concise one‑liner:

return Excel::download(new Export($row, $list, $mergeCell, $columnName, $formatNumber), 'fileName');

This implementation enables developers to output richly formatted Excel reports directly from Laravel applications.