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.

How can I, when they click the link, have a pop-up to download a CVS with the record from MySQL?

I have all the information to get the record already. I just don't see how to have PHP create the CSV file and let them download a file with a .csv extension.

Answer 1

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 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

Simple method -

$data = array (
    'aaa,bbb,ccc,ffffdd',
    '123,456,789',
    '"aaa","bbb"');

$fp = fopen('data.csv', 'wb');
foreach($data as $line){
    $val = explode(",",$line);
    fputcsv($fp, $val);
}
fclose($fp);

So each line of the $data array will go to a new line of your newly created CSV file. It only works only for PHP 5 and later.

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

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 6

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;
}