How to export JavaScript array info to csv (on cli

Question

I know there are lot of questions of this nature but I need to do this using JavaScript. I am using Dojo 1.8 and have all the attribute info in array, which looks like this:

[["name1", "city_name1", ...]["name2", "city_name2", ...]]

Any idea how I can export this to CSV on the client side?

Answer 1

Create a blob with the csv data .ie var blob = new Blob([data], type:"text/csv");

If the browser supports saving of blobs i.e if window.navigator.mSaveOrOpenBlob)===true, then save the csv data using: window.navigator.msSaveBlob(blob, 'filename.csv')

If the browser doesn't support saving and opening of blobs, then save csv data as:

var downloadLink = document.createElement('<a></a>');
downloadLink.attr('href', window.URL.createObjectURL(blob));
downloadLink.attr('download', filename);
downloadLink.attr('target', '_blank');
document.body.append(downloadLink);

Full Code snippet:

var filename = 'data_'+(new Date()).getTime()+'.csv';
var charset = "utf-8";
var blob = new Blob([data], {
     type: "text/csv;charset="+ charset + ";"
});
if (window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob) {
     window.navigator.msSaveBlob(blob, filename);
} else {
    var downloadLink = document.element('<a></a>');
    downloadLink.attr('href', window.URL.createObjectURL(blob));
    downloadLink.attr('download', filename);
    downloadLink.attr('target', '_blank');  
    document.body.append(downloadLink); 
    downloadLink[0].click(); 
}

Answer 2

I would recommend using a library like PapaParse: https://github.com/mholt/PapaParse

The accepted answer currently has multiple issues including:

• it fails if the data contains a comma
• it fails if the data contains a linebreak
• it (kind of) fails if the data contains a quotation mark

Answer 3

One arrow function with ES6 :

const dataToCsvURI = (data) => encodeURI(
`data:text/csv;charset=utf-8,${data.map((row, index) =>  row.join(',')).join(`\n`)}`
);

Then :

window.open(
  dataToCsvURI(
   [["name1", "city_name1"/*, ...*/], ["name2", "city_name2"/*, ...*/]]
  )
);

In case anyone needs this for reactjs, react-csv is there for that

Answer 4

There are two questions here:

1. How to convert an array to csv string
2. How to save that string to a file

All the answers to the first question (except the one by Milimetric) here seem like an overkill. And the one by Milimetric does not cover altrenative requirements, like surrounding strings with quotes or converting arrays of objects.

Here are my takes on this:

For a simple csv one map() and a join() are enough:

    var test_array = [["name1", 2, 3], ["name2", 4, 5], ["name3", 6, 7], ["name4", 8, 9], ["name5", 10, 11]];
    var csv = test_array.map(function(d){
        return d.join();
    }).join('\n');

    /* Results in 
    name1,2,3
    name2,4,5
    name3,6,7
    name4,8,9
    name5,10,11

This method also allows you to specify column separator other than a comma in the inner join. for example a tab: d.join('\t')

On the other hand if you want to do it properly and enclose strings in quotes "", then you can use some JSON magic:

var csv = test_array.map(function(d){
       return JSON.stringify(d);
    })
    .join('\n') 
    .replace(/(^\[)|(\]$)/mg, ''); // remove opening [ and closing ]
                                   // brackets from each line 

/* would produce
"name1",2,3
"name2",4,5
"name3",6,7
"name4",8,9
"name5",10,11

if you have array of objects like :

var data = [
  {"title": "Book title 1", "author": "Name1 Surname1"},
  {"title": "Book title 2", "author": "Name2 Surname2"},
  {"title": "Book title 3", "author": "Name3 Surname3"},
  {"title": "Book title 4", "author": "Name4 Surname4"}
];

// use
var csv = data.map(function(d){
        return JSON.stringify(Object.values(d));
    })
    .join('\n') 
    .replace(/(^\[)|(\]$)/mg, '');

Answer 5

The answers above work, but keep in mind that if you are opening up in the .xls format, columns ~~might~~ be separated by '\t' instead of ',', the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/14966131/6169225 worked well for me, so long as I used .join('\t') on the arrays instead of .join(',').

Answer 6

In Chrome 35 update, download attribute behavior was changed.

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373182

to work this in chrome, use this

var pom = document.createElement('a');
var csvContent=csv; //here we load our csv data 
var blob = new Blob([csvContent],{type: 'text/csv;charset=utf-8;'});
var url = URL.createObjectURL(blob);
pom.href = url;
pom.setAttribute('download', 'foo.csv');
pom.click();