[RESOLVED] Prompt User for Save and Write

Anyaer

I've got a page displaying a large table assembled from several MySQL tables. I'm making a button the user can hit to save the table as a CSV to somewhere on their own local disk. So far, I have the string that contains the CSV-formatted text. What I need to know is how do I prompt the user to decide where it goes and then write it there? All I can really find on writing/saving files is the standard, easy-as-pie example of fopen, fwrite, fclose with nothing about how to prompt for a save location and then write a file there.

leatherback


// Generate a header
header("Content-type: application/txt");

// Create filename
$filename = "Database_backup_".date("F_j_Y").".csv";

// Create a header
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");

// Spit out the data
echo $csv_formatted_string;

// End the application
exit();

Anyaer

Thanks, that works. The only thing is it opens a new, blank window before it prompts with the save/open dialog. Is that unavoidable?

leatherback

hm... It doesn't for me ;-)

How do you link to it? I just have a link to the page that generates the content:

<a class="navlink" href="index.php?action=16"> Database backup </a>

Which is formatted to look like a little button.

Anyaer

It's a button of type submit, that passes a value into a GET array. Here's where it gets a bit funny.

This is part of a system that I've inherited from another programmer, so I've basically been asked to weld this function onto the pre-existing page. He uses a form with the GET protocol, then you basically check to see if a variable in the GET array is set to determine if the button is pressed. However, I found that the code never saw that the 'Save as CSV' button's value was set. It always seemed to be blank.

Finally, I added an onclick JavaScript that sets the form's target to document.window before it submits, and that works. Whether or not that's what's somehow opening a new window, I'm not sure.

leatherback

Hm..

Why do you need to use javascript, I wonder? But ok. I am not sure. You could try it without the javascript. I suppose the form determines what do display, so you have no real alternatives here, unless you'd store the options in a session, and use a separate page to create the csv, but that sounds like an overkill.

Anyaer

As a follow-up:

I got it to work without opening a new window, but irritatingly I can't explain why. First I noticed the form's action value wasn't set, and set it. It worked. Then I commented out the JavaScript I now thought was unnecessary. It didn't work. Commented out all lines of the JavaScript except a call that clears a hidden value in the form that has nothing to do with filling the CSV-formatted string. It works. Don't know why. The value that apparently must be cleared has nothing to do with filling the string, but there it is.