I have a class for writing CSV lines to a new file
fwrite($this->the_file_resource, implode($this->delimiter, $headers_array) . PHP_EOL);
When this runs on our application, every so often the data will write to the CSV file corrupted, I can run the same command immediately afterwards and it works completely as expected.
Expected:
Corrupt:
One thing I have noticed is that it's always the header and always in the first couple of columns.
What would the best method be to troubleshoot this? It's very difficult to replicate as it's not consistent.
Try setting the header correctly before generating your CSV. Your problem looks like an encoding problem
header("Content-Type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file.csv");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: UTF-8");
Related
I am trying to serve up a dynamically generated csv file. For some reason when I get the file, there are 18 empty rows preceding the data. I don't have any space between the headers I define and the csv data I'm sending. If I write the data to a file on the server, it does not get these empty rows. However, if I write the file and then try to serve it to the user, the empty lines come back. So I'm wondering if perhaps I've messed up the headers, or if perhaps there is another issue I'm not thinking of:
function generate_csv($source_type, $include_unpublished = FALSE) {
// retrieve data from DB
....
// start up headers
$csv_name = "$source_type-$data_set-csv_" . date('Y-m-d') . '.csv';
header('Content-Type: text/x-comma-separated-values');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Cache-Control: private', false); // required for certain browser
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $csv_name . '"');
// send csv data
print $csv_data;
} //end function
Disclaimer: I asked this question at https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/27649/extra-empty-rows-when-serving-csv-file, but it dosn't seem to be drupal-specific and there weren't many ideas coming up over there..
Maybe this lines "hang" in an output buffer, that were started some time before. This way you can set headers without the good old "headers already sent"-error, but this content will be send to the browser when flushing the buffer anyway.
Try
ob_clean();
print $csv_data;
http://php.net/ob-clean
It must be problem with files that you are including. Every whitespace more than one newline after php closing tag ?> is sent to the browser.
Best solution is to get rid of this closing tags in every php file.
Other option will be to remove only unnecessary new lines from them or to bufer output and disregard it before serving file.
I have an XML feed generated by a PHP script with mod_rewrite running. IE opens the feed OK but I cannot get it to save the file to disk or import to Excel.
The file I am trying to access in the url is similar to:
http://domain.com/download/export.xml
This gets written to a download PHP script and is not actually an XML file.
After setting the headers as below, it is still not possible to get IE to save the file. Also, as it is not capable of displaying the plain source, copy & paste into notepad will not work because of various styling changes IE makes to the XML.
<?php
header("Content-type: text/xml");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="QuoteExport_'.$quoteDate.'_'.$quoteSlot.'.xml"');
Does anyone know the solution? Thanks.
Edit:
Thanks for the help so far. I have tried a combination of these headers and still not getting the results I want. No matter what I set, IE always displays it in-line in the browser with no option to download. The save functionality also still does not work either. Any other ideas how to force IE to save the XML as a file by using headers?
Edit2: The state now is that IE gives the option to open/save but whilst trying to save, there is a popup saying that it is "Unable to open this internet site.". Yet at the same time, the open option displays the content with no issues.
To force ie and other browsers to download you have to specify specific headers like in this example :
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$fileName . ".csv\"");
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");
Other wise if you use text/xml, ie thinks he knows how to display it and does so.
You need to set a session parameter for some versions of IE. Assuming you have $my_file_name and $my_file_contents set, here's how it would look:
if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE')) {
session_cache_limiter("public");
}
session_start();
header('Content-type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".' $my_file_name '. "');
print($my_file_contents);
(Adapted from this article)
Try setting the content-type to application/xml or application/force-download
After spending much time changing the headers, I went for a slightly different approach. No matter what I was setting them to, it just would not work for me.
Anyway the solution implemented was:
When a client lands on the URL (http~://my-domain.com/downloads/export.xml), the PHP script generates a real XML file in the same location as the request-URI and saves it on the server, schedules it for a delete job in the future and then effectively refreshes the browser. Then, the mod-rewrite rules on the second request serve the actual file and then IE can use the file correctly. A future request then causes the cycle to run again.
Slightly round about way of doing things, but it was the fastest method. Also, I had the ability to schedule file operations from another part of the application making life much easier for clean-up!
Anyway thanks for the help and I did learn a thing-or-two about header options.
I'm currently building a script that will allow a user to download a file via a URL without actually seeing the filename or where the file is stored. So far I have everything built out, but I need to know how I would go about calling the file to open and download. I currently have a working version (code below), but for some reason the PHP is corrupting the download. Everytime I try to open a file that downloads to my desktop I get a corrupt error message. When I open the same file on the server itself, the file works just fine.
URL Structure:
http://www.example.com/download/file/cjVQv0ng0zr2
Code that initiates the download
$fullpath = BASE_PATH . '../uploads/brochures/' . $vendors['0']['filename'];
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename="' . $fullpath . '"');
Am I doing something wrong that would cause the file to become corrupt? Am I missing a header or two?
Thanks in advance,
Jake
You need to call the following line after sending the header.
readfile($fullpath);
and also adjust in the header like this:
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename="' . basename($fullpath) . '"');
One thing i am not sure about is the $fullpath .. try to see if the $fullpath you have is correct and you can actually reach the file, this needs to be the full physical path of the file.
I think it would also be a good idea to add the following header as well:
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
I had a similar issue a while back. Make sure you don't have any extra whitespace in your script file, either before the "<?php" tag or after the "?>" tag. In my case the last character of my script was "\n" instead of the expected ">".
I had faced the same problem sometime back, following worked for me; put a
while( #ob_end_clean() );
just before header functions:
header("Content-Type: ". $row['p_mime']);
header("Content-Length: ". $row['p_size']);
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=".$row["p_name"]);
Content-disposition: attachment/inline has to be set according to cases (1. prompt for download / 2. open in browser)
NOTE: Take care that you are not echoing and value before the header function, and being over cautious will not do any harm, silent out all the function before header function which you think would fail or spawn a warning message prefixing "#" symbol to those lines of php code.
all the best :)
Make sure you exit...
(i'm using a blob)
header("Content-Type: " . $response['content_type'] );
header("Cache-Control: maxage=1");
header("Pragma: public"); //fixes ie bug
echo trim($_data);
exit();
I have a PHP file that generates xls files using the module found at http://pear.php.net/package/Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer/
I can create the sample document just fine and when I open it, it looks fine.
My next step it to turn it into a downloadable link. To do that, I did this:
$mimeType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
$file_name = "test.xls";
$file_path = "/tmp/".$file_name;
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Type: application/download");
header('Content-Type: application/' . $mimeType);
header('Content-Length: '.$size);
header("Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=$file_name ");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary ");
// open the file in binary read-only mode
// display the error messages if the file can´t be opened
$file = & fopen($file_path, 'rb');
if ($file) {
// stream the file and exit the script when complete
fpassthru($file);
exit;
} else {
echo $err;
}
When I download the file however, it contains a lot of garbage data both in Excel and OpenOffice. The diff says that then binary file in the /tmp folder and the downloaded file are different from each other. I'm guessing that it has something to do with the headers or with fpassthru but I haven't had much luck with debugging the issue.
Any ideas on what the problem is?
The multiple Content-Type headers are uncessary. You're essentially saying that the file is a muffin and a pizza and a ford taurus all at the same time. All you need is the application/octet-stream version, unless you want to serve up the exact mime type.
As well, is there any reason you're trying to turn the file handle returned by fopen() into a reference?
Try something simpler:
<?php
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=$file_name");
readfile("/tmp/test.xls");
exit();
?>
and see if that does any better.
Just make sure that you don't send ANYTHING out to the browser BEFORE the actual file content gets send.
It might just be some php 'error' or even 'notice' that Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer is producing and you don't even see. Or it might be a closing '?>' tag thats followed by s simple space or newline.
I had a similar error where the file that was generated inside the web folders were working. However the delivery using header('...') gave me corrupt files. This was due to a single space at the end of one php file after the closing '?>' tag.
I am using the same library and I just discovered that the files in the library itself are creating the whitespace.
Solution: In the following files remove the whitespace at the end of the file, or remove the ?> closing tag at the end.
Files to edit (all files in the Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer package):
Writer.php
Workbook.php
Worksheet.php
PPS.php
Parser.php
OLE.php
Parser.php
File.php
BIFFWriter.php
Validator.php
Root.php
Add the following code at the top of the page where the excel file is generated
ob_clean();
This would clear all the gibberish data.Also check for any echo statements.If echo statements are present, remove them. The data should always present in format specified by excel package.
I am trying to run the following in php
$test = svn cat ....
Now the output of $test is basically a binary file returned by svn. How do I make this binary file available as a download. Am trying to put the following:
$test = `svn cat ....`
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=" . urlencode($filename));
header("Content-Type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Type: application/download");
header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
echo $test;
From the comments on PHP.net's documentation on passthru():
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"myfile.zip\"");
header("Content-Length: 11111");
passthru("cat myfile.zip",$err);
exit();
The above code was provided by igor at bboy dot ru.
Have you considered saving this file to temporary location on the hard disk and serving it from there? Is it really necessary to serve the file from memory? What if you have 500 people downloading this file. Will the server save all 500 files in memory while the users are downloading them?
My recommendation, save the file to a temporary location that is accessible to your web server and give them a link.
In addition to Peter D's answer; you could write the binary file to the file system and then serve it as a download. Instead of giving users a link.
Try it with a simple text file first, if that works; try it with your binary file.
You probably want to use the passthru() function in PHP.
The call might need to come after the headers, but try both ways first.
edit: I don't think this will cause a memory issue. I don't think PHP will keep the output in memory, because it's sent straight on through to stdout.
The problem might be that you've got three content-type headers - as far as I know, browsers only accept one so I'd go for octet-stream.