webpage to excel or csv

[bean_2k1]

Hi all

I'm currently working on a customer database at work where users can login in to this system and view all invoices and statement they have had with us. On one of my pages is display a table with every order they have placed with us, i want the user to be able to download that table content into csv or excel format. if this is possible


Thanks
Steven

[alexgeek]

It would be better to use database.
you can query it and show the results.

[masonbarge]

This is actually something I haven't done. Here is how I'd get started, in case you don't get anything better:

Most SQL flavors will handle a csv-type export for you. (There are some advantages to a tab-delineated download for Excel, IIRC.)

So I guess my first approach would be to look at database functions. I've only done it with MySQL using phpMyAdmin, but logically, there must be a function sequence, which means you should be able to access it via a GET or POST request to the db. Since that would mean that the PHP is simple and the database function is more advanced, I'd ask this question in the appropriate db Forum.

As another possibility, you could format a query so that the result prints as a csv file, then let your user copy and paste it into a Notepad file and save it wherever he wanted. This would eliminate the hard part -- unless I'm missing something, you should be able to do this off the top of your head by simply structuring the PHP output, avoiding download management code -- but it wouldn't be nearly as slick. Again, it has been a while since I worked with this format, so it might need some instructions to the user about exactly how to save it; don't you use a *.csv extension and save as "All Files"?

[Marc]

Surely for a CSV, you will need to use the implode() function to add commas to the data then just write that to the file?

After all, CSV stands for Comma Seperated Values.