15 minutes into writing this article, I realized that PHP 5.1 now includes the fputcsv function that was missing from earlier versions of PHP. It formats a line (passed as a fields array) as CSV and write it (terminated by a newline) to the specified file handle. However, it is not properly documented what exactly is the "newline" character; is it CR, LF or CRLF.
I have a habit of re-inventing the wheel, so I've put together a substitute for this function that echoes the CSV data instead of writing to a file and (tries to) closely follow the recommendations described in RFC 4180.
<?php
/*
* PHP code to export MySQL data to CSV
* https://salman-w.blogspot.com/2009/07/export-mysql-data-to-csv-using-php.html
*
* Sends the result of a MySQL query as a CSV file for download
*/
/*
* establish database connection
*/
$conn = mysql_connect('MYSQL_HOST', 'MYSQL_USERNAME', 'MYSQL_PASSWORD') or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db('MYSQL_DATABASE', $conn) or die(mysql_error($conn));
/*
* execute sql query
*/
$query = sprintf('SELECT * FROM MYSQL_TABLE');
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die(mysql_error($conn));
/*
* send response headers to the browser
* following headers instruct the browser to treat the data as a csv file called export.csv
*/
header('Content-Type: text/csv');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=export.csv');
/*
* output header row (if atleast one row exists)
*/
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
if ($row) {
echocsv(array_keys($row));
}
/*
* output data rows (if atleast one row exists)
*/
while ($row) {
echocsv($row);
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
}
/*
* echo the input array as csv data maintaining consistency with most CSV implementations
* - uses double-quotes as enclosure when necessary
* - uses double double-quotes to escape double-quotes
* - uses CRLF as a line separator
*/
function echocsv($fields)
{
$separator = '';
foreach ($fields as $field) {
if (preg_match('/\\r|\\n|,|"/', $field)) {
$field = '"' . str_replace('"', '""', $field) . '"';
}
echo $separator . $field;
$separator = ',';
}
echo "\r\n";
}
?>
This example code sends the CSV data to the browser along with appropriate headers that should pop-up the "Open/Save As..." dialog.
