Exporting search results to excel

[eluser]CI_Newb[/eluser]
On my search page, i wanted the users to be able to export the search results to an excel file.

I tried the to_excel_pi plugin found on the wiki here and it works great. Only problem i'm having is that I need to convert data before it goes to the spreadsheet. Like convert epoch time to human form, and convert numeric values from db table.

I figured since the to_excel_pi plugin can't do that without hacking it apart, I just created a view page that loads in excel that takes the search results and exports. This way I can do all the tweaking i need.

Is this probably the best way or is there other plugins that could do this?