Ignore included header for PHP csv file download

Question

I am trying to download a query as a .csv on a PHP web page, which has include_once ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'header.php'); at the top. When I use the PHP header() function to download it, the .csv file contains the html code from header.php followed by the .csv data. How do I get the .csv without the html (only the query data)?

For downloading I use:

$query_file_name = "App_data.csv";
header("Content-type: text/csv");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$query_file_name");
$query_file = fopen("php://temp", "w");

// write file
$row = $results->fetch_assoc();
fputcsv($query_file, array_keys($row));  // csv head
fputcsv($query_file, $row);  // first line
while($row = $results->fetch_assoc()) {
    fputcsv($query_file, $row);
}
fclose($query_file);

I realize I could trim the top of the file, but I do not know how to catch this before the file downloads. Optimally, I would only like to have the html from header.php not included at all.

Answer 1

You need to add a condition to skip Html Code in header.php when you are calling from csv file. I hope it' will work. please refer below code.

$fromCsv = true;
require_once 'header.php';
ob_start();
$query_file_name = "App_data.csv";
$query_file = fopen("php://output", "w");
// write file
$row = $results->fetch_assoc();
fputcsv($query_file, array_keys($row));  // csv head
fputcsv($query_file, $row);  // first line
while($row = $results->fetch_assoc()) {
    fputcsv($query_file, $row, ",");
}
header('Content-type: application/csv');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="' . $query_file_name . '.csv"');
header('Cache-Control: max-age=0');
header("Expires: 0");
header('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT'); // always modified
header('Cache-Control: cache, must-revalidate'); // HTTP/1.1
header('Pragma: public'); // HTTP/1.0
fpassthru($query_file);
fclose($query_file);
exit;

in header.php, all html code move to if condition

if (!$fromCsv)
{
  //move all html code here
}

Answer 2

I ended up trying a question I found that previously didn't work. After adding ob_clean() to it, it works. My code ended up being

ob_end_clean();
ob_clean();
$query_file_name = "FabApp_data.csv";
$query_file = fopen("php://output", "w");

// write file
$row = $results->fetch_assoc();
fputcsv($query_file, array_keys($row));
fputcsv($query_file, $row);
while($row = $results->fetch_assoc()) {
    fputcsv($query_file, $row, ",");
}

header('Content-Type: text/csv; charset=utf-8');
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$query_file_name");
exit();