Question

I have a function that exports a table into a CSV file, then I open that file using a spreadsheet application.

Is there a way to set the header of the CSV to name each column appropriately.

For example:

I have a table the contains first name, last name, email, and comments.

And the table is set as: fname, lname, email, comments

So the table exports as:

fname, lname, email, comments john, doe, [e-mail], I am John Doe this is my comment 

I want to change the headers (fname, lname, email, comments) to something more readable, so it would be like this:

First Name, Last Name, Email, Comments john, doe, [e-mail], I am John Doe this is my comment 

Here is the code I have:

function exportNamesCommentsCSV($table,$filename = 'volunteer_2009_comments.csv') {     $csv_terminated = '\n';     $csv_separator = ',';     $csv_enclosed = ''';     $csv_escaped = '\\';     $sql_query = 'select lname, fname, comments from volunteers_2009';      // Gets the data from the database     $result = mysql_query($sql_query);     $fields_cnt = mysql_num_fields($result);      $schema_insert = '';      for ($i = 0; $i < $fields_cnt; $i++) {         $l = $csv_enclosed . str_replace($csv_enclosed, $csv_escaped . $csv_enclosed,             stripslashes(mysql_field_name($result, $i))) . $csv_enclosed;         $schema_insert .= $l;         $schema_insert .= $csv_separator;     } // end for      $out = trim(substr($schema_insert, 0, -1));     $out .= $csv_terminated;      // Format the data     while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {         $schema_insert = '';         for ($j = 0; $j < $fields_cnt; $j++) {             if ($row[$j] == '0' || $row[$j] != '') {                  if ($csv_enclosed == '') {                     $schema_insert .= $row[$j];                 } else {                     $schema_insert .= $csv_enclosed .                      str_replace($csv_enclosed, $csv_escaped . $csv_enclosed, $row[$j]) . $csv_enclosed;                 }             } else {                 $schema_insert .= '';             }              if ($j < $fields_cnt - 1) {                 $schema_insert .= $csv_separator;             }         } // end for          $out .= $schema_insert;         $out .= $csv_terminated;     } // end while      header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');     header('Content-Length: ' . strlen($out));     header('Content-type: text/x-csv');     header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename');     echo $out;     exit; } 

Answer 1

The header of a CSV file is just the first line. So you’d change this block:

for ($i = 0; $i < $fields_cnt; $i++) {     $l = $csv_enclosed . str_replace($csv_enclosed, $csv_escaped . $csv_enclosed,             stripslashes(mysql_field_name($result, $i))) . $csv_enclosed;     $schema_insert .= $l;     $schema_insert .= $csv_separator; } // end for  $out = trim(substr($schema_insert, 0, -1)); $out .= $csv_terminated; 

You could change it to something very simple, along the lines of:

$out .= 'First Name, Last Name, Email, Comments\n'; 

unless I have completely misunderstood your question.

Edit: Your example code shows one specific query. If it needs to work for multiple queries, you’ll have to find a source of those friendly names. For example, you could pass the names in as an argument or store them in the database.