Create a CSV File for a user in PHP

Question

I have data in a MySQL database. I am sending the user a URL to get their data out as a CSV file.

I have the e-mailing of the link, MySQL query, etc. covered.

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Answer 1

You can simply write your data into CSV using fputcsv function. let us have a look at the example below. Write the list array to CSV file

$list[] = array("Cars", "Planes", "Ships");
$list[] = array("Car's2", "Planes2", "Ships2");
//define headers for CSV 
header('Content-Type: text/csv; charset=utf-8');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file_name.csv');
//write data into CSV
$fp = fopen('php://output', 'wb');
//convert data to UTF-8 
fprintf($fp, chr(0xEF).chr(0xBB).chr(0xBF));
foreach ($list as $line) {
    fputcsv($fp, $line);
}
fclose($fp);

Answer 2

header("Content-Type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file.csv");

function outputCSV($data) {
  $output = fopen("php://output", "wb");
  foreach ($data as $row)
    fputcsv($output, $row); // here you can change delimiter/enclosure
  fclose($output);
}

outputCSV(array(
  array("name 1", "age 1", "city 1"),
  array("name 2", "age 2", "city 2"),
  array("name 3", "age 3", "city 3")
));

php://output
fputcsv

Answer 3

<?
    // Connect to database
    $result = mysql_query("select id
    from tablename
    where shid=3");
    list($DBshid) = mysql_fetch_row($result);

    /***********************************
    Write date to CSV file
    ***********************************/

    $_file = 'show.csv';
    $_fp = @fopen( $_file, 'wb' );

    $result = mysql_query("select name,compname,job_title,email_add,phone,url from UserTables where id=3");

    while (list( $Username, $Useremail_add, $Userphone, $Userurl) = mysql_fetch_row($result))
    {
        $_csv_data = $Username.','.$Useremail_add.','.$Userphone.','.$Userurl . "\n";
        @fwrite( $_fp, $_csv_data);
    }
    @fclose( $_fp );
?>

Answer 4

The easiest way is to use a dedicated CSV class like this:

$csv = new csv();
$csv->load_data(array(
    array('name'=>'John', 'age'=>35),
    array('name'=>'Adrian', 'age'=>23), 
    array('name'=>'William', 'age'=>57) 
));
$csv->send_file('age.csv'); 

Answer 5

Writing your own CSV code is probably a waste of your time, just use a package such as league/csv - it deals with all the difficult stuff for you, the documentation is good and it's very stable / reliable:

http://csv.thephpleague.com/

You'll need to be using composer. If you don't know what composer is I highly recommend you have a look: https://getcomposer.org/

Answer 6

Put in the $output variable the CSV data and echo with the correct headers

header("Content-type: application/download\r\n");
header("Content-disposition: filename=filename.csv\r\n\r\n");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: ASCII\r\n");
header("Content-length: ".strlen($output)."\r\n");
echo $output;