# 🚀 5 minute quick start

As a quick demonstration, we'll create an export for the User model. This guide expects that a Laravel is already installed, and the project has a seeded users table and User Eloquent model.

We'll follow 3 steps:

1 Creating the export

2 Customizing the export

3 Exporting

# Creating the export 1

Laravel Excel Exports are all about export objects and concerns. These Exports are a set of instructions about how to get data and how to present it inside the Spreadsheet.

💡 If you want to read more about the architecture behind export objects and concerns, you find it in the architecture docs.

These Exports are located in the app/Exports folder and can either be created by the corresponding Artisan command or manually.

You may do this by using the make:export command.

php artisan make:export UsersExport --model=User

If you prefer to create the export manually, create a new class in app/Exports called UsersExport.

.
├── app
│   ├── Exports
│   │   ├── UsersExport.php
│
└── composer.json

# Customizing the export 2

Next we can open the newly created app/Exports/UsersExport class. You'll see that the entire export is already prepared by the Artisan command.

<?php

namespace App\Exports;

use App\User;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\FromCollection;

class UsersExport implements FromCollection
{
    public function collection()
    {
        return User::all();
    }
}

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The Export class implements the FromCollection concern. This concern is a data source concern, meaning it determines the data we want to export.

TIP

💡 FromCollection is only one of several sources of data. You can find the other ones in the next chapter of the documentation.

# Exporting 3

Next we'll want to export our newly created Users Export. One way to export, is by triggering a direct download.

To keep the example simple, we'll do the export right in the routes/web.php file, however you are free to trigger the export in a controller, Artisan command, Queue job, etc.

Excel::download has two required parameters: the export object and the filename.

Route::get('users/export', function() {
    return Excel::download(new UsersExport, 'users.xlsx');
});

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Open http://localhost/users/export in your browser. If everything went well a users.xlsx spreadsheet will have been downloaded.

TIP

💡 Excel::download() is one way of exporting. More ways can be found in the next chapters.

# What's next?

Of course Laravel Excel has more functionality than only downloading a spreadsheet of Eloquent models. In the next chapters we'll have a closer look at the following basic concepts:

1 Ways of exporting

You might not want to download the spreadsheet, but save it to the disk. In this chapter we'll cover the other ways of storing the spreadsheet.

2 Data sources

Exporting a collection of Eloquent models is just one way of exporting data. In this chapter we'll cover exporting from views, models, arrays and other data sources.

3 Data presentation

In some cases you might want to alter the data or style the data of a specific row, cell or column. First we'll have a look at the recommended way of using column configuration, in next chapters other -more verbose- methods we'll be explained.

4 Advanced

Laravel Excel also contains more advanced concepts, these we'll be tackled in the remaining chapters.