syntax error, unexpected '=' on php 7.2.34 but not on php 7.2.17

[leabdalla]

I'm migrating my servers from PHP 7.2.17 to PHP 7.2.34 and the Excel generation process is returning this error on new server:

```{
   "class": "Symfony\\Component\\Debug\\Exception\\FatalThrowableError",
   "message": "syntax error, unexpected '='",
   "code": 0,
   "file": "/var/www/html/vendor/phpoffice/phpspreadsheet/src/PhpSpreadsheet/Cell/Cell.php:236",
   "trace": [
       "/var/www/html/vendor/composer/ClassLoader.php:427",
       "/var/www/html/vendor/maatwebsite/excel/src/Writer.php:178",
       "/var/www/html/vendor/maatwebsite/excel/src/Writer.php:47",
      ...
```

The same code is working fine on the old server with 7.2.17 php version.

I can't change the new server PHP version because I'm using AWS ECR Docker provider with image public.ecr.aws/docker/library/php:7.2.34-fpm-buster.

So, is there any other way I can avoid this error?

I'm using Laravel 5.6 and "maatwebsite/excel": "^3.1"

[patrickbrouwers]

As this is an error in PhpSpreadsheet package, the only thing you can try is to lock PhpSpreadsheet to an older version that doesn't have the ??= syntax. It seems to me you somehow managed to install a PhpSpreadsheet version that doesn't support 7.2

[leabdalla]

I've defined versions in composer.json

"maatwebsite/excel": "3.1.17",
"phpoffice/phpspreadsheet": "1.10",

Now it doesn't cause the error but for some reason it opens a new tab and close it automatically.
If I copy the page link and paste in browser, the file is download correctly.

I'm generating the export this way:

return Excel::download(new \App\Exports\MyExport($users), 'users.xlsx');

Am I doing something wrong?

[leabdalla]

solved by defining package versions (like my last comment here) and also making sure the link to export would follow same prefix as original page (http or https).