Exporting to a format

netfrugal

I want to ensure I'm exporting my data to a tab-delimited format.

when I export data to a file I add "\t" and then add "\n" to end a row.
Is this typical for all exporting scripts?

$contents .= "First column"."\t";
$contents .= "First column"."\t";
$contents .= "First column"."\n";

header("Content-type: application/x-msdownload");
	header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=something.txt");
	header("Pragma: no-cache");
	header("Expires: 0");
print "$contents";

Basically, I'm using someone else's script to export my data to a txt file. But to be honest, I don't know if it's tab or not. I'm assuming the \t means tab. So I just need someone to validate that.

And if that means tab, then what is needed to have a csv file?

Any help in this subject will be sooooo appreciated.

leatherback

Yeah, it is pretty standard. you have the option to use \r\n (or the other way around, i am never sure). This is the difference between unix linebreak (Which you are using) and windows (what I showed you). Where unix only requires a newline, and windows requires a carriage return.

exporting as csv (comma separated file) only requires you to use a comma as separator, instead of the tab (which is indeed \t).

netfrugal

Thanks for the clarification!

You mentioned that all I need to do is use a comma as the separator.
What happens if there's a comma in the data? Sometimes addresses have commas.
Or doctors like to put their Titles next to their last names: John Smith, M.D.
Would the comma separator be confused?

leatherback

yeah, ok; I was almost honest there. Indeed. If you are storing text as csv it gets more tricky. 😃

True csv is a little more complex, as it has a data delimiter & a data separator. And there are a few requirements.

I had a look and found this page which gives an explanation. There are php classes which will format your data for you, which might be the safest way to go. Unless you feel like having a bit of a play, of course.