CSV file not loading correctly in Excel - php

I've seen a couple of similar questions but have not had one that answers my issue.
I have an export to CSV button which exports results from my database to CSV.
I don't want to save the file, but I just want to use headers to export the echo content to a file which should then be opened in Excel (or similar product).
All works fine but Excel does not appear to separate the values, but rather shows all rows in 1 row with the commas intact. I found a solution elsewhere where I should add "sep=,\r\n" to the first line to tell Excel to use commas as the delimiter, which then makes it work great; but, in other products it now shows the sep=, on the first line and continues with the remaining of the output.
Here is the code I'm using:
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-control: private");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=export.csv");
echo "sep=,\r\n"; // This makes it work in excel but fails in other products such as openoffice
echo "this,is,just,a,test\r\n";
exit;

As Mark Baker suggested, as the dilimeter is set by locale settings, I changed it to ; and it worked like a charm :) Thank you!

Related

Why is my PDF download corrupted?

I have a script that generates a pdf using fpdf, this file is saved correctly on the server on my computer. In that same php file I run the following code to download the file. When i download the pdf and I check it in notepad, everything in the pdf is the same, except for the fact that it contains a lot of my previous files html at the beginning of it. The file saved to my server doesn't have any of that.
What could cause something like this to happen? I have no idea where to look for the source of this error, can anyone point me in the direction to finding the problem?
<?php
$filename=($name.$ran.'.pdf');
$pdf->Output($name.$ran.'.pdf');
header ("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header('Content-Type: application/octetstream');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary");
header("Content-length: ".filesize($filename));
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\"".basename($filename)."\"");
readfile($name.$ran.'.pdf');
?>
I managed to figure things out, thanks to hakre! Essentially I just needed to clear out the output buffer using ob_clean () before using readfile() and the code worked!

Formatting Excel when exporting via header

Personally I've never used this method before and I havent been able to find any information to help me.
The page I'm updating uses the following to export a html table as an Excel file.
header("Content-type: application/octet-stream");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Target-Report.xls");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");
It generates the file just fine, I just need to make the report more presentable.
Is there a way to set Cell type in Excel (i.e. Percentage) and set decimal places (in cells where I've created excel formulas).
I'd prefer to use PHPExcel, but I dont have time to practically rewrite the entire script

Force image download with php using header() in smartphones and tablets

I was searching already for a long time and I havent seen any right answer yet.
I'm trying to create a system in PHP where the user can download a signPicture that I create in JPG.
The program is working fine in all desktop computers. There is not problem at all, even for IE8.
The header that I use:
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="test.jpg"');
in the end i just stream the picture:
imagejpeg($imgSign,NULL,100);
How I said, it's working really good in every browser. But then we get to the mobile devices, where in android for example, download a test.jpg file... but then it cannot open... and the same with ipad (actually doesnt download, it show the image in the browser and than I save it... but it does not open either).
I also try more examples that I saw, but doesnt change anything, like:
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/download");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary ");
Any idea how to sort this out in mobile devices?
Thanks!
I got it!
There were differents problems. I found the clear solution in comments from this post:
http://www.digiblog.de/2011/04/android-and-the-download-file-headers/
header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="test.JPG"');
The important steps: I send everything with a form. The form, to make it work in mobiles, needs to have the target='_top' and the method='get'
It also make errors if the extention (jpg) is not in UPPERCASE and the file name is not between " ".
Now it works in all devices that I try by far. :)
Special thanks to Jörg Wagner, author of the post.

Transferring Excel via PHP header()

An Excel file is stored in a database (hexvalues of former binary data). I need to read it and make it available for download.
Here's the code...
$out = hex2bin($out); // the stuff from the database
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='$filename'");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: private",false);
die($out);
Actually I receive stuff... and it looks like the original file with a slight difference.
When using a hex-editor, it shows
ÐÏࡱá
instead of
ÐÏࡱá
(looks like an additional tab). So Excel isn't able to show the sheet but the raw data.
That's not from the data in $out; the conversion bin2hex (during import in database) and hex2bin (export from database) works without problems. If I write $out to a file via fopen / fwrite, it's exactly the original Excel file (which I can open normally).
How can I accomplish this?
Ensure you don't have this extra tab character before the opening <?php tag or after the closing one ?>. Actually, it is good practice to omit the closing tag exactly for this reason.

PHP_excel: Export to xlsx gets downloaded successfully but when we open it it shows warning Excel found unreadable content

i am using php_excel to export to xlsx. In my application im making use of template.
When i download, the xlsx file gets downloaded fine, but when we open its showing the following warning:
"Excel found unreadable content in 'project_report(3).xlsx'. Do you want to recover the contente of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes."
If i click yes it opens the file correctly.
And one more thing is when i attach the downloaded file to the mail. And if i open it sing Google Spread sheet it says bad format unable to open.
so if anyone know the reason please suggest me to solve this.
check your headers, here are mine:
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-Disposition: attachment;filename=$filename");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
$objWriter->save('php://output');
check for output (spaces before <?php forgotten echo? etc

Categories