Exporting selected attributes to Excel from specific layer using PyQGIS

Question

I have created some code to select a specific layer in the Layers Panel. Now I want to export the selected features to an Excel document. Is there a way to do this?

Code so far:

#Select layer to export selected features
name = 'Individual Trees'

view = iface.layerTreeView()
m = view.model()

listIndexes = m.match(m.index(0, 0), Qt.DisplayRole, name, Qt.MatchFixedString)
    
if listIndexes:
    i = listIndexes[0]
    view.selectionModel().setCurrentIndex(i, QItemSelectionModel.ClearAndSelect)

#Export to excel file: C:\\Users\\MatthewWhitehead\\OneDrive - Innovative Forestry Ltd\\Arboricultural Reports\\Tree Condition Survey\\Tree_Condition_Ind_Export.xlsx

Answer 1

No need to programmatically select your layer in the layers panel- you can access the layer you want to export simply by its name. To export the layer to a .xlsx, you can call the 'Export to spreadsheet' processing algorithm from the Python console.

See docs for the algorithm here.

However, to only export selected features, I think you will need to create a temporary layer containing only the selected features of your permanent layer. You can try the script below:

lyr_name = 'Individual Trees'
out_path = 'C:\\Users\\MatthewWhitehead\\OneDrive - Innovative Forestry Ltd\\Arboricultural Reports\\Tree Condition Survey\\Tree_Condition_Ind_Export.xlsx'

lyr = QgsProject.instance().mapLayersByName(lyr_name)[0]

wkb = QgsWkbTypes.displayString(lyr.wkbType())
crs = lyr.crs().authid()
tmp_lyr = QgsVectorLayer(f'{wkb}?crs={crs}', f'{lyr_name}', 'memory')
tmp_lyr.dataProvider().addAttributes(lyr.fields())
tmp_lyr.updateFields()
tmp_lyr.dataProvider().addFeatures([f for f in lyr.selectedFeatures()])

processing.run("native:exporttospreadsheet", {
    'LAYERS' : [tmp_lyr],
    'USE_ALIAS' : False,
    'FORMATTED_VALUES' : False,
    'OUTPUT' : out_path,
    'OVERWRITE' : True
    })