225

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.

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20 Answers 20

Reset to default
482 
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

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10 Comments

More people need to see this and vote it up. This is easily the best answer on this page. PHP already has built-in functions for formatting CSV content. Everyone should use them. Great answer, @Andrey :)
Too bad fputcsv() doesn't work correctly though :( bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50686
Nice, but the outputCSV function is needlessly complicated. You can just foreach over $array, sending its values straight into fputcsv. No need for that __outputCSV and the array_walk :) foreach($data as $vals) {fputcsv($filehandler,$vals);}
I'm having some issues with French characters in the array because I eventually need the .csv to be open in Excel. It chokes on the accented characters. Things like "Prévalence","age 1","city 1" Any ideas? Messing with UTF-8 hasn't helped thus far.
Don't know why but its not working in my case. I'm fetching rows from database as while($row as mysql_fetch_array($res)){$data[] = $row;}. Also, I'm not getting what is php://output used for
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295

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;
}
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4 Comments

note the rules for CSVs are important. To ensure good display, put doublequotes around your fields, and don't forget to replace double-quotes inside fields to double double-quotes: `echo '"'.str_replace('"','""',$record1).'","'.str_replace....
Just to clarify, the correct HTTP Content-Type header for CSV is text/csv, not application/csv. I doubt any modern browser will care either way, but since there are standards we might as well use them.
In general, please follow RFC 4180 when generating CSV files. tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180
@Oleg Barshay: OMG, that RFC is a master piece: "If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with another double quote.". ANOTHER DOUBLE-QUOTE!
19

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.

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6 Comments

How do you change the separator from , to ; ?
how should we add a button, to trigger this event, so that user will be able to download the CSV file on demand ?
I'll have "SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL" error with the line "fopen("php://output", "w");" When I change it to "$fp = fopen('stats.csv', 'w');" it doesn't show error. But then of course it doesn't work. How should I solve it ?
@CanCeylan, That is a question in it's own right and I need more details to solve it.
Add fputcsv($outstream, array_keys($results[0])); just before your foreach to also include column headers.
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16

In addition to all already said, you might need to add:

header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: UTF-8");

It's very useful when handling files with multiple languages in them, like people's names, or cities.

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10

Create your file then return a reference to it with the correct header to trigger the Save As - edit the following as needed. Put your CSV data into $csvdata.

$fname = 'myCSV.csv';
$fp = fopen($fname,'wb');
fwrite($fp,$csvdata);
fclose($fp);

header('Content-type: application/csv');
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=".$fname);
readfile($fname);
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1 Comment

Using "inline" Content-Disposition means that the browser should attempt to show it without downloading (IE tend to embed an Excel instance for that). "attachment" is what is needed to force a download.
9

The thread is a little old, I know, but for future reference and for noobs as myself:

Everyone else here explain how to create the CSV, but miss a basic part of the question: how to link. In order to link to download of the CSV-file, you just link to the .php-file, which in turn responds as being a .csv-file. The PHP headers do that. This enables cool stuff, like adding variables to the querystring and customize the output:

<a href="my_csv_creator.php?user=23&amp;othervariable=true">Get CSV</a>

my_csv_creator.php can work with the variables given in the querystring and for example use different or customized database queries, change the columns of the CSV, personalize the filename and so on, e.g.:

User_John_Doe_10_Dec_11.csv
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3 Comments

Uh - anyone reading this be VERY wary of this approach. I would wager that inputs are not being escaped properly and this can lead to big security holes in your application.
His method is very safe, and it works great. You can easily control access with the session, and you can also store all of the information you want to put into a csv in a session var. Then just unset it as part of the process converting it to a csv. I would just suggest using session vars instead of a query string.
There are no security holes per se with this method. As long as the php file referenced is doing it's job of sanitation and access checking. But it doesn't really make sense to show all of that here. The point of the post is you can link to whatever url generates the csv.
5

First make data as a String with comma as the delimiter (separated with ","). Something like this

$CSV_string="No,Date,Email,Sender Name,Sender Email \n"; //making string, So "\n" is used for newLine

$rand = rand(1,50); //Make a random int number between 1 to 50.
$file ="export/export".$rand.".csv"; //For avoiding cache in the client and on the server 
                                     //side it is recommended that the file name be different.

file_put_contents($file,$CSV_string);

/* Or try this code if $CSV_string is an array
    fh =fopen($file, 'w');
    fputcsv($fh , $CSV_string , ","  , "\n" ); // "," is delimiter // "\n" is new line.
    fclose($fh);
*/
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Comments

5

Here is a full working example using PDO and including column headers: 

$query = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM test WHERE id=?');
$query->execute(array($id));    
$results = $query->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
download_csv_results($results, 'test.csv'); 
exit();


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

    $outstream = fopen("php://output", "wb");    
    fputcsv($outstream, array_keys($results[0]));

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

    fclose($outstream);
}
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Comments

3

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);
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Comments

2

Simple method - 

$data = array (
    'aaa,bbb,ccc,dddd',
    '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.

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Comments

2 
<?php
header("Content-type: application/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file.csv");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");

ini_set('display_errors',1);
$private=1;
error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);

mysql_connect("localhost", "user", "pass") or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("db") or die(mysql_error());

$start = $_GET["start"];
$end = $_GET["end"];

$query = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE created>='{$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;
}
?>
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1 Comment

Do NOT use this code in production, it is vulnerable to SQL injections
1

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

https://www.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.

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Comments

1

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');
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Comments

1

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";
}
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Comments

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.

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Comments

0

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/

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Comments

0 
<?
    // 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 );
?>
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0

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);
}
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2 Comments

It is always favoured to add the code to so itself instead of linking, as links tends to change or disappear over time.
Your answer is to a very old thread. While in 2008, it was standard practice to build up your own comma separated lines, the correct method since PHP 5.1.0 would be to use the built in fputcsv function (php.net/fputcsv). Take care when reading old threads to ensure that the information contained in them is still relevant.
0

public function actionExportnotificationresponselogdata() {

    $fileName = '/tmp/notificationresponselogs_' . date('d-m-Y-g-i-h') . '.csv';
    $f = fopen($fileName, 'w'); 
     fputs( $f, "\xEF\xBB\xBF" ); //for utf8 support in csv



        $csv_fields=array();
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading1';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading2';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading3';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading4';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading5';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading6';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading7';
        $csv_fields[] = 'heading8';
        fputcsv($f, $csv_fields);

    
$notification_log_arr = $notificationObj->getNotificationResponseForExport($params); //result from database

    if (count($notification_log_arr) > 0) {
        $serialNumber=1;
    foreach ($notification_log_arr AS $notifaction) {
            

            $fields = array();
            $fields['serialNumber']= $serialNumber  ;
            $fields['fld_1']= $notifaction['fld_1'] ;
            $fields['fld_2']= $notifaction['fld_2'] ;
            $fields['fld_3']= $notifaction['fld_3'] ;
            $fields['fld_4']= $notifaction['fld_4'] ;
            $fields['fld_5']= $notifaction['fld_5'] ;
            $fields['fld_6']= $notifaction['fld_6'] ; 
            $fields['fld_7']= $notifaction['fld_7'] ; 
           // print_r($fields); die;
            fputcsv($f, $fields,",");
        
            $serialNumber++;  }
            fclose($f);
            if (file_exists($fileName)) {
                
                header("Content-type: application/csv");
                header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="."exportlog".date("Y-m-d_H:i").".csv");
                header("Content-length: " . filesize($fileName));
                header("Pragma: no-cache"); 
                header("Expires: 0");
                readfile($fileName);
                unlink($fileName);
                exit;
            }
}
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Comments

-1

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;
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