Exporting a dynamic table to Excel in PHP - php

Question

I have a large table with an unknown amount of columns that I want to be able to export to MS Excel via a download link. I have done this before with no issues. However, that was when I had a known number or columns. I currently am able to successfully send data to an Excel file. The table headers display correctly across the top of the table. The problem is with the data. Instead of placing the data across the page in the correct columns, it is putting it all in the first column. Here is part of my code:
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
// Loops through the results
for($i=0; $i < $num_cols; $i++)
{
// Prints out the data in a table cell
echo("<Td class='data'>$row[$i]</Td>");
$FileRecord = Array($row[$i]);
$exportFile->Export_Record($FileRecord);
}
}
Normally I do $FileRecord = Array($row[0], $row[1], ..., $row[n]) and everything works great, but I am not sure how to do that if I don't know how many columns there are. Any help would be great!
I am not using any library. $exportFile is from a function that I am using. It looks like this:
class CSV_File {
private $out='';
private $name='';
private $column_names="";
private $count = 0;
//Creates the file name and the header columns
function __Construct($buf, $names) {
$GLOBALS["name"] = $buf;
$GLOBALS["column_names"] = ($names."\n");
}
public function Export_Record($array) {
if (!is_array($array))
throw new Exception("NOT AN ARRAY");
for ($i = 0; $i <= count($array); $i++) {
$GLOBALS["out"] .= $array[$i];
if ($i < count($array)-1) {
$GLOBALS["out"] .= ",";
}
}
$GLOBALS["out"] .= "\n";
$GLOBALS["out"]++;
}
public function ExportButton($align) {
$output = $GLOBALS["out"];
$filename = $GLOBALS["name"];
$columns = $GLOBALS["column_names"];
if ($align == null)
$align = "align";
echo(" <$align><form name=\"export\" action=\"export.php\" method=\"post\">
<button type=\"submit\" style='border: 0; background: transparent; font-size: 12px;font-weight:bold;'>
<img src = 'images/icon_csv.png' width = '16' height ='16' alt ='Download Data'> Download</button>
<input type=\"hidden\" value=\"$columns\" name=\"csv_hdr\">
<input type=\"hidden\" value=\"$filename\" name=\"fileprefix\">
<input type=\"hidden\" value=\"$output\" name=\"csv_output\">
</form></align>");
}
}
And then export.php looks like this:
if (isset($_POST['csv_hdr']))
{
$out .= $_POST['csv_hdr'];
$out .= "\n";
}
if (isset($_POST['csv_output']))
{
$out .= $_POST['csv_output'];
}
if (isset($_POST['fileprefix']))
{
$fname .= $_POST['fileprefix'];
}
//Now we're ready to create a file. This method generates a filename based on the current date & time.
$filename = $fname."_".date("Y-m-d_H-i",time());
//Generate the CSV file header
header("Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Content-disposition: csv" . date("Y-m-d") . ".csv");
header("Content-disposition: filename=".$filename.".csv");
//Print the contents of out to the generated file.
print $out;
//Exit the script
exit;'

Answer 1

That's not an Excel table. It's an html table that you just happen to be feeding into Excel.
Your problem is that you're not starting a new table row for every record you're fetching, so everything just becomes a new cell in the first row.
You need something like
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo '<tr>';
foreach($row as $val) {
echo "<td>$val</td>";
}
echo '</tr>';
}