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

To have it send it as a CSV and have it give the file name, use header():

http://us2.php.net/header

header('Content-type: text/csv');
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename="myfile.csv"');

As far as making the CSV itself, you would just loop through the result set, formatting the output and sending it, just like you would any other content.

Answer 2

Instead of:

$query = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE created>='{$start} 00:00:00'  AND created<='{$end} 23:59:59'   ORDER BY id";
$select_c = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error()); 

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($select_c, MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
    $result.="{$row['email']},";
    $result.="\n";
    echo $result;
}

Use:

$query = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE created>='{$start} 00:00:00'  AND created<='{$end} 23:59:59'   ORDER BY id";
$select_c = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error()); 

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($select_c, MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
    echo implode(",", $row)."\n";
}

Answer 3

How to write in CSV file using PHP script? Actually I was also searching for that too. It is kind of easy task with PHP. fputs(handler, content) - this function works efficiently for me. First you need to open the file in which you need to write content using fopen($CSVFileName, ‘wb’).

$CSVFileName = “test.csv”;
$fp = fopen($CSVFileName, ‘wb’);

//Multiple iterations to append the data using function fputs()
foreach ($csv_post as $temp)
{
    $line = “”;
    $line .= “Content 1″ . $comma . “$temp” . $comma . “Content 2″ . $comma . “16/10/2012″.$comma;
    $line .= “\n”;
    fputs($fp, $line);
}

Answer 4

Already very good solution came. I'm just puting the total code so that a newbie get total help

<?php
extract($_GET); //you can send some parameter by query variable. I have sent table name in *table* variable

header("Content-type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$table.csv");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");

require_once("includes/functions.php"); //necessary mysql connection functions here

//first of all I'll get the column name to put title of csv file.
$query = "SHOW columns FROM $table";
$headers = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
$csv_head = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($headers, MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
    $csv_head[] =  $row['Field'];
}
echo implode(",", $csv_head)."\n";

//now I'll bring the data.
$query = "SELECT * FROM $table";
$select_c = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error()); 

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($select_c, MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
    foreach ($row as $key => $value) {
            //there may be separator (here I have used comma) inside data. So need to put double quote around such data.
        if(strpos($value, ',') !== false || strpos($value, '"') !== false || strpos($value, "\n") !== false) {
            $row[$key] = '"' . str_replace('"', '""', $value) . '"';
        }
    }
    echo implode(",", $row)."\n";
}

?>

I have saved this code in csv-download.php

Now see how I have used this data to download csv file

<a href="csv-download.php?table=tbl_vfm"><img title="Download as Excel" src="images/Excel-logo.gif" alt="Download as Excel" /><a/>

So when I have clicked the link it download the file without taking me to csv-download.php page on browser.

Answer 5

Try:

header("Content-type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file.csv");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");

echo "record1,record2,record3\n";
die;

etc

Edit: Here's a snippet of code I use to optionally encode CSV fields:

function maybeEncodeCSVField($string) {
    if(strpos($string, ',') !== false || strpos($string, '"') !== false || strpos($string, "\n") !== false) {
        $string = '"' . str_replace('"', '""', $string) . '"';
    }
    return $string;
}

Answer 6

Here is an improved version of the function from php.net that @Andrew posted.

function download_csv_results($results, $name = NULL)
{
    if( ! $name)
    {
        $name = md5(uniqid() . microtime(TRUE) . mt_rand()). '.csv';
    }

    header('Content-Type: text/csv');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='. $name);
    header('Pragma: no-cache');
    header("Expires: 0");

    $outstream = fopen("php://output", "wb");

    foreach($results as $result)
    {
        fputcsv($outstream, $result);
    }

    fclose($outstream);
}

It is really easy to use and works great with MySQL(i)/PDO result sets.

download_csv_results($results, 'your_name_here.csv');

Remember to exit() after calling this if you are done with the page.