Create txt.file from db and send to user

[Anon]

Hi,

I want to send the results of a database query to the user in a text file.

How would I do that?

Any help is appreciated...

Toby

[jesus_hairdo]

Are you wanting to make the user download the text file or just view it in a browser window ??

To force them to download the file use something like this

header('Content-Type: application/octetstream');
header('Content-Disposition: filename="$nameofdisk");
header('Pragma: no-cache');
header('Expires: 0');

print $output;

You need to make sure that there is no output from your script before the headers are sent and that any files you include don't have blank lines in.(see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php for details of how headers are used.

Jamie

[Anon]

Hi Jamie,

thanks for your answer...

the user should get the results in a text file.

I have managed to create the text file on the server.

What I need to do now is send it to the user...

I don't know if putting all the data in a variable and then sending that to the user will work, as the variable would get rather large (a couple of thousand db entries).

Also: can I avoid having to store the data on the server?

Thanks for your help 🙂

[jesus_hairdo]

You can avoid storing the file at all i have a system which outputs 75000 records from a database into a text file !!.
Just set 1 var with all of the output from the database,

here is my output bit.

header('Content-Type: application/save');
header('Content-Disposition: filename="$filename_you_want_to_default_to");
header('Pragma: no-cache');
header('Expires: 0');

print $output;

---

You have to make sure that at no point before this section is there to be any output from the script. The headers HAVE to be first.

give this a try see how you get on.

Jamie

[Anon]

Thanks, Jamie. I wasn't too sure about the variable size.

Your solution seems to work flawlessly.

🙂

Toby