phpcsvhttp-headersmime

How to use the CSV MIME-type?


In a web application I am working on, the user can click on a link to a CSV file. There is no header set for the mime-type, so the browser just renders it as text. I would like for this file to be sent as a .csv file, so the user can directly open it with calc, excel, gnumeric, etc.

header('Content-Type: text/csv');
echo "cell 1, cell 2";

This code works as expected on my computer (Isn't that how it always is?) but does not work on another computer.

My browser is a nightly build of FF 3.0.1 (on linux). The browsers it did not work in were IE 7 and FF 3.0 (on windows)

Are there any quirks I am unaware of?


Solution

  • You could try to force the browser to open a "Save As..." dialog by doing something like:

    header('Content-Type: text/csv');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=MyVerySpecial.csv');
    echo "cell 1, cell 2";
    

    Which should work across most major browsers.