How to download a temporary file

Question

I\'m trying to create a short PHP script that takes a JSON string, converts it to CSV format (using fputcsv), and makes that CSV available as a downloaded .csv file

Answer 1

json_decode() by default translates elements into objects rather than arrays. fputcsv() expects the data passed to be an array.

I'd recommend changing:

$jsonArray = json_decode( $_POST['json'] );

To:

$jsonArray = json_decode( $_POST['json'], True );

And see if that doesn't fix your problem.

When attempting to tackle problems such as these I'd highly recommend enabling display_errors and setting error_reporting to E_ALL to see if there some sort of error you are missing out on:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', '1');

// Rest of your code here

Answer 2

One problem is that tmpfile() returns a file handle, while filesize takes a filename as parameter.
The following line:

header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($tmp));

probably gets evaluated as:

header('Content-Length: 0');

Check that all the calls to header() are executed before any output happens.

Answer 3

Note that tmpfile() returns a file handle, but all the functions you have need a file path (i.e a string), not a handle - notably basename, filesize, and readfile. So none of those function calls will work correctly. Also basename won't return a file extension either. Just call it whatever you want, i.e

'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=data.csv'

As @Joshua Burns also says, make sure you're passing in an array to fputcsv or use the assoc parameter.

Answer 4

Firstly, check this string out, i would change it to:

header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($tmp).'"');

i had the problem with it once, with browser compatibility :)