fputcsv: Empty rows in csv file after each array - php

Question

I am trying to write a csv files with values from two arrays. Here's the code:
<?php
fopen('output.csv','w');
$merged_fields = array_combine($authors, $ids);
$range = count($merged_fields);//gives number of elements in array
$name = array_keys($merged_fields);
$id = array_values($merged_fields);
$name = str_replace(',',', ',$name);
for ($a = 0; $a <=$range; $a++) {
//filter out rows where id = '000000'
if($id[$a] == '000000'){
continue;
}
fputcsv($fp, array_filter(array($name[$a], $id[$a])));
}
}
fclose($fp);
?>
If the original array was "Smith, John" => "888888", "Smith, Jane"=>"777777" , and the next array is "Jones,John"=>"999999" there is a space after the line after each array, so in the csv the output ends up:
"Smith, John",888888
"Smith, Jane",777777
"Johnes, John",999999
I will use this csv to import data and need to get the extra lines out of there. I have tried applying "array_filter" to other parts of the array as it appears there is an empty element in there somewhere, but that hasn't worked.

Answer 1

The blank line is produced because you iterate one time too many over the array. You will have a few warning messages like these:
E_NOTICE : type 8 -- Undefined offset: ...
But the code will not be interrupted by that and so an empty value will be output by fputcsv, resulting in the empty line. If then you call the same code again to append to the generated file, the empty line will separate the two batches of output.
Fix this by replacing <= in the following line:
for ($a = 0; $a <= $range; $a++) {
so you get:
for ($a = 0; $a < $range; $a++) {
Remember that if an array has $range elements, the first element is at index 0 and the last at index $range-1, unless you have explicitly defined your array otherwise.