How to make fputcsv “echo” the data

Question

I need a way to make the fputscv function write data to the browser on-the-fly instead of creating a temporary file, saving data into that file and doing a echo file_g

Answer 1

Producing a CSV is actually not all that difficult (parsing a CSV is a little bit more involved).

Sample code for writing a 2D Array as CSV:

$array = [
    [1,2,3],
    [4,5,6],
    [7,8,9]
];

// If this CSV is a HTTP response you will need to set the right content type
header("Content-Type: text/csv"); 

// If you need to force download or set a filename (you can also do this with 
// the download attribute in HTML5 instead)
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.csv"')

// Column heading row, if required.
echo "Column heading 1,Column heading 2,Column heading 3\n"; 

foreach ($array as $row) {
    $row = array_map(function($cell) {
        // Cells containing a quote, a comma or a new line will need to be 
        // contained in double quotes.
        if (preg_match('/["\n,]/', $cell)) {
            // double quotes within cells need to be escaped.
            return '"' . preg_replace('/"/', '""', $cell) . '"';
        }

        return $cell;
    }, $row);

    echo implode(',', $row) . "\n";
}