Question

I am simply generating a csv file based on data stored in a mysql table. The generated csv, when opened in excel, seems mostly ok, but whenever it has a newline character, excel puts the data on a new row. Any idea how to prevent that?

Sample data

line 1 some data
another data

CSV generation code:

header("Content-Type: text/csv; charset=UTF-8");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$MyFileName."\"");
$filename = $MyFileName;
$handle = fopen("temp_files/".$filename, "r");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize("temp_files/".$filename));
fclose($handle);
echo $contents;  
exit;

content snippet I used to get rid of new line(didn’t work):

$pack_inst = str_replace(',',' ',$get_data->fields['pack_instruction']);
        $pack_inst = str_replace('\n',' ',$pack_inst);
        $pack_inst = str_replace('\r',' ',$pack_inst);
        $pack_inst = str_replace('\r\n',' ',$pack_inst);
        $pack_inst = str_replace('<br>',' ',$pack_inst);
        $pack_inst = str_replace('<br/>',' ',$pack_inst);
        $pack_inst = str_replace(PHP_EOL, '', $pack_inst);
        $pattern = '(?:[ \t\n\r\x0B\x00\x{A0}\x{AD}\x{2000}-\x{200F}\x{201F}\x{202F}\x{3000}\x{FEFF}]|&nbsp;|<br\s*\/?>)+';
        $pack_inst = preg_replace('/^' . $pattern . '|' . $pattern . '$/u', ' ', $pack_inst);
        $content .=','.$pack_inst;

Answer 1

According to RFC 4180, if a column’s content contains the row delimiter (\r\n), the column delimiter (,) or the string delimiter (") then you must enclose the content inside double quotes ". When you do that, you must escape all " characters inside the content by preceding them with another ". So the following CSV content:

1: OK,2: this "might" work but not recommended,"3: new
line","4: comma, and text","5: new
line and ""double"" double quotes"
1: Line 2

Will produce 2 rows of CSV data, first one containing 5 columns.

Having said that, have a look at fputcsv() function. It will handle most gory details for you.