Question

I am exporting data from a database using PHP to convert it into a CSV. I figured it’d be useful to provide the first row with a title (similar to the <th> element in HTML) so the end user would understand the column’s meanings. Example

============= | id | name | ============= | 0  | tim  | | 1  | tom  | ============= 

Which would look like this as a CSV

id, name 0, tim 1, tom 

Is there a way to mark up the first row’s columns or do anything differently that programs that often read CSVs (example Microsoft Excel) will mark it up accordingly. I.e. provide a semantic hook to inform the client (possibly Excel but not restricted to) that this is a column header?

Answer 1

Nope. And to make it even more fun, there’s nothing that says that the header line has to be present at all. Good times, good times…