Question

First time I’ve had to do this, but I need to save the results of a query to CSV and create a file on the server, prior to it being passed via SFTP to a remote server. I can successfully create the CSV which is downloaded in the browser, per the code below, but cant seem to get it to save a file on the server. I think I may need file_put_contents? If anyone can suggest a method, or indeed a better approach to sending the outputs via sftp, its much apopreciated.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `policy_details` WHERE `policyNumber` = '848938'"); 
if (!$result) die('Couldn\'t fetch records'); 
$num_fields = mysql_num_fields($result); 
$headers = array(); 
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_fields; $i++) 
{     
       $headers[] = mysql_field_name($result , $i); 
} 
$fp = fopen('php://output', 'w'); 
if ($fp && $result) 
{     

       header('Content-Type: text/csv');
       header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="export.csv"');
       header('Pragma: no-cache');    
       header('Expires: 0');
       fputcsv($fp, $headers); 
       while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) 
       {
          fputcsv($fp, array_values($row)); 
       }
//die; 
} 

Answer 1

Immediate thought would be that you don’t need to send headers when saving a file. If you are just saving a regular csv file to the local server (and doing the FTP thing separately), I also don’t see the benefit of using the ‘php://’ scheme. I’d use something like

$fp = fopen('/path/to/new/file.csv', 'w+');
if ($fp && $result) 
{     
       while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) 
       {
          fputcsv($fp, array_values($row)); 
       } 
}

On the other hand, you could save the file directly over FTP, and avoid a 2 stage process.