How to use the CSV MIME-type?

Question

In a web application I am working on, the user can click on a link to a CSV file. There is no header set for the mime-type, so the browser just renders it as text. I would

Answer 1

You are not specifying a language or framework, but the following header is used for file downloads:

"Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=abc.csv"

Answer 2

This code can be used to export any file, including csv

// application/octet-stream tells the browser not to try to interpret the file
header('Content-type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($data));
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="export.csv"');

Answer 3

With Internet Explorer you often have to specify the Pragma: public header as well for the download to function properly..

header('Pragma: public');

Just my 2 cents..

Answer 4

You could try to force the browser to open a "Save As..." dialog by doing something like:

header('Content-type: text/csv');
header('Content-disposition: attachment;filename=MyVerySpecial.csv');
echo "cell 1, cell 2";

Which should work across most major browsers.