Download CSV file to local Download's folder

Question

I have a php file which converts the form data to csv format and then it should get downloaded automatically to the user's local download folder.

$time = time();
$filename = 'exceldownloads/myreport_'.$time.'.csv';
$file = fopen($filename,'w');
fputcsv($file,$rowexcel);

The above code works fine and stores the csv file in the specified folder in server. But my requirement is to download it to a local folder. I have seen many solutions to the above problem, but they are working only if we know the local destination folder. However, My requirement is to make it downloadable to the end-user local download's folder (whose download location Im unaware of). Is there anyway to get it downloaded on to the end user system without specifically mentioning the destination path.

Answer 1

You can export the output of your web page as an attachment, which will be shown as a download to the user. You can do this by outputting appropriate headers right before you make any output to the user.

Here's an example, that creates a download of a CSV file called foo.csv:

header("Content-type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment;Filename=foo.csv");

After outputting the headers, you just output all of the file's data to the page content.

* Edit: * Here's a working snippet, as requested:

header("Content-type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment;Filename=foo.csv");
echo implode(";", $rowexcel) . "\r\n";  // you should expand this accordingly

alternatively, here is another snippet, based on your code:

$filename = 'myreport'.time().'.csv';
$f = fopen($filename,'w');
fputcsv($f,$rowexcel);
header('Content-type: application/csv');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="'.$filename.'"');
readfile($filename);

If you are not getting any download, make sure that you don't output anything before the header() calls. Also, make sure that you don't have any UTF8 BOM bytes at the beginning of your PHP file, as these can be misinterpreted for output