Question

The following code is supposed to output 4 fields into a CSV, Category, SKU, Price and Special Price, and for the most part works well except the output has 3 quote marks around all items like thus

"""Joystick Head""","""Man222""","""155""","""124.95"""

yet the output in the browser is fine

Type: "Joystick Head" SKU: "Man222" Price: "155" Special Price: "124.95"

I have tried str_replace, implode and anything else i can think of, with varying results, sometimes managing to remove almost all quotes.

I am hoping this is something silly and I have been staring at it too long, help?

define('SAVE_FEED_LOCATION','var/export/prices.csv');
set_time_limit(0);
require_once 'app/Mage.php';
Mage::app('default');

try{
    $handle = fopen(SAVE_FEED_LOCATION, 'w'); 

    $attributeName = 'producttype';

    $products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
    $products->addAttributeToFilter('status', 1);
    $products->addAttributeToFilter('visibility', 4);
    $products->addAttributeToSelect('*');
    $prodIds = $products->getAllIds();

    $product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');

    $counter_test = 0;

    foreach($prodIds as $productId) {

        if (++$counter_test > 0 && $counter_test < 100){

            $product->load($productId);
            $product_data = array();    
            $productId = $product->getId();

            $productAtt = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($productId);
            $attributes = $productAtt->getAttributes();

            $attributeValue = null;     
            if(array_key_exists($attributeName , $attributes)){
                $attributesobj = $attributes["{$attributeName}"];
                $attributeValue = $attributesobj->getFrontend()->getValue($productAtt);
            }
            if ($attributeValue == "No")
            {
                $attributeValue = NULL;
            }

            $product_data['producttype'] = $attributeValue;
            $product_data['sku'] = $product->getSku();  
            $product_data['price'] = round($product->getPrice(),2);
            $product_data['special_price'] = round($product->getSpecialprice(),2);  

            // if no special price use normal price
            if ($product_data['special_price'] == NULL) { 
                $product_data['special_price'] = round($product->getPrice(),2);
            }

            foreach($product_data as $k=>$val){
                $bad=array('"',"\r\n","\n","\r","\t");
                $good=array(""," "," "," ","");
                $product_data[$k] = '"'.str_replace($bad,$good,$val).'"'; 
            }

            echo "Type: ". $product_data['producttype'] . " SKU: " . $product_data['sku'] . " Price: ". $product_data['price'] . " Special Price: " . $product_data['special_price'] . "<br>";

            fputcsv($handle, $product_data, ',', '"');
        }
    }
    fclose($handle);
    echo '<br> Completed at: ' . time();
}
catch(Exception $e){
    $headers = 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n"; 
    error_log($e->getMessage(), 1, '[e-mail]', $headers);
    die($e->getMessage());
}

Answer 1

The issue is in line

$product_data[$k] = '"'.str_replace($bad,$good,$val).'"';

There the code adds double quotes to each value of the array. Later the fputcsv() escapes quotes by tripling them to properly output data in CVS format. You can take a look at examples in PHP documentation for fputcsv() to see, that this is a normal behavior.

There is nothing wrong in 3x double quotes, as it is just a method to preserve double quotes in original data, while passing values to another system via CSV transport. However, if you intentionally strip double quotes, then that line looks like having a typo. It is expected to be:

$product_data[$k] = str_replace($bad, $good, $val);

Additional notes

1. You don’t need to strip double quotes from the values. It is not a
   bad symbol for CSV. I suggest to remove double quote from bad symbols and do not mind triple double quotes at all.
2. The str_replace() can take array as third
   argument. Threfore you can replace all bad values in one call, rather then doing it in foreach cycle. E.g.: $product_data = str_replace($bad, $good, $product_data);
3. You don’t need to redeclare bad and good value arrays on each
   cycle iteration. They are not changed in the script, so their declaration can be
   moved right before foreach ($prodIds as $productId) { line