How to create and download a csv file from php script?

To create and download a CSV file from a PHP script, you can use the following steps:

  1. Open a new PHP file in your text editor and set the content type to "text/csv" using the following line of code:
header('Content-Type: text/csv; charset=utf-8');
  1. Set the response header to specify that the file should be downloaded as an attachment with the following line of code:
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=data.csv');

  1. Create an array of data that you want to include in the CSV file. Each element in the array should represent a row in the CSV, and each element in the row should be a field in the CSV.

  2. Use the PHP fputcsv() function to write the data to the file. The fputcsv() function takes two parameters: a file handle, and an array of data.

  3. Open a file handle for writing using the fopen() function, and pass the file handle and the data array to the fputcsv() function.

  4. Close the file handle using the fclose() function.

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Here is an example of how you can use these steps to create and download a CSV file from a PHP script:

<?php

// Set the content type to CSV
header('Content-Type: text/csv; charset=utf-8');

// Set the response header to specify that the file should be downloaded as an attachment
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=data.csv');

// Create an array of data
$data = [['Name', 'Email', 'Phone'], ['John Smith', '[email protected]', '555-555-1212'], ['Jane Doe', '[email protected]', '555-555-1213']];

// Open a file handle for writing
$fp = fopen('php://output', 'w');

// Write the data to the file
foreach ($data as $row) {
  fputcsv($fp, $row);
}

// Close the file handle
fclose($fp);

This script will create a CSV file with the following content:

Name,Email,Phone
John Smith,[email protected],555-555-1212
Jane Doe,[email protected],555-555-1213

When the script is executed, the browser will prompt the user to download the CSV file.