Write a CSV file from a PHP Array

Question

I appreciate there are already a lot of questions around this subject. But, as I\'m not a PHP developer, I\'m struggling to get anything to work for my specific object struc

Answer 1

I've created a function for that before. Bare in mind the code bellow does not assume there is any csv headers.

function doCSV($file, $content = array())
{
    $handle =  fopen($file, "w");
    foreach($content as $value) {
        fputcsv($handle, array(key($content), $value));
    }

    fclose($handle);
}

doCSV("test.csv", array("Test 1" => "Value 1", "Test 2" => "Value 2"));

If this is not what you're asking for let me know, I'll edit the answer.

Answer 2

For writing a PHP array to a CSV file you should use the built in PHP function fputcsv:

<?php

$list = array (
    array('header 1', 'header 2', 'header 3', 'header 4'),
    array('5656', '454545', '5455', '5454'),
    array('541212', '454545', '5455', '5454'),
    array('541212', '454545', '5455', '5454'),
);

$fp = fopen('file.csv', 'wb');

foreach ($list as $fields) {
    fputcsv($fp, $fields);
}

fclose($fp);

Edit:

More specific example based on your data input:

<?php

// I had to recreate your data, this is just an example
$array_of_objects = array();
for( $i = 0; $i < 5; $i++ )
{
    $obj = new \stdClass();
    $obj->username = "Rein";
    $obj->answer = "Correct";
    $obj->awesomeness = 1000;

    $array_of_objects[] = $obj;
}

// Open a file to write to
$fp = fopen('file.csv', 'wb');

$i = 0;

// Loop the array of objects
foreach( $array_of_objects as $obj )
{
    // Transform the current object to an array
    $fields = array();

    foreach ($obj as $k => $v)
    {
        $fields[ $k ] = $v;
    }

    if( $i === 0 )
    {
        fputcsv($fp, array_keys($fields) ); // First write the headers
    }

    fputcsv($fp, $fields); // Then write the fields

    $i++;
}

fclose($fp);

Edit 2:

Based on new information (you have a JSON string to start with), I'm added this example as a better way to write the data to a CSV file:

<?php

$data = json_decode($_POST['data'], TRUE);
$records = $data['records'];

$fp = fopen('records.csv', 'wb');

$i = 0;
foreach ($records as $record) {

    if($i === 0) {
        fputcsv($fp, array_keys($record));
    }

    fputcsv($fp, array_values($record));
    $i++;
}

fclose($fp);

Answer 3

Try below solution header of csv will be (item, cost, approved by) - replace $data with your array variable:

$data = array(
    array( 'item' => 'Server', 'cost' => 10000, 'approved by' => 'Joe'),
    array( 'item' => 'Mt Dew', 'cost' => 1.25, 'approved by' => 'John'),
    array( 'item' => 'IntelliJ IDEA', 'cost' => 500, 'approved by' => 'James')
);

$fp = fopen('file.csv', 'w');
$i = 0;
foreach ($data as $fields) {
    if($i == 0){
        fputcsv($fp, array_keys($fields));
    }
    fputcsv($fp, array_values($fields));
    $i++;
}

fclose($fp);

for more detail have alook at : PHP: fputcsv - Manual