php fputcsv and enclosing fields.

Question

I was just about to ask the same questions as the question aksed here.... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2489553/forcing-fputcsv-to-use-enclosure-for-all-fields

The question was

When I use fputcsv to write out a line to an open file handle, PHP will add an enclosing character to any column that it believes needs it, but will leave other columns without the enclosures.

For example, you might end up with a line like this

11,"Bob ",Jenkins,"200 main st. USA ",etc

Short of appending a bogus space to the end of every field, is there any way to force fputcsv to always enclose columns with the enclosure (defaults to a ") character?

The answer was:

No, fputcsv() only encloses the field under the following conditions

/* enclose a field that contains a delimiter, an enclosure character, or a newline */
if (FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK(delimiter) ||
  FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK(enclosure) ||
  FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK(escape_char) ||
  FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK('\n') ||
  FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK('\r') ||
  FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK('\t') ||
  FPUTCSV_FLD_CHK(' ')
)

There is no "always enclose" option.

I need to create a CSV file will every field enclosed... What would be the best solution?

Thanks in advance...

Answer 1

Roll your own function - its not hard:

 function dumbcsv($file_handle, $data_array, $enclosure, $field_sep, $record_sep)
 {
     dumbescape(false, $enclosure);
     $data_array=array_map('dumbescape',$data_array);
     return fputs($file_handle, 
         $enclosure 
         . implode($enclosure . $field_sep . $enclosure, $data_array)
         . $enclosure . $record_sep);
 }
 function dumbescape($in, $enclosure=false)
 {
    static $enc;
    if ($enclosure===false) {
        return str_replace($enc, '\\' . $enc, $in);
    }
    $enc=$enclosure;
 }

(above is using unix style escaping)

C.

Answer 2

Just write out the CSV file. It's one of the most trivial file formats there is.

foreach($lines as $lineArray)
{
    echo '"' . implode('", "', $lineArray) . '"' . "\n";
}

That's half of it. If your values may have quote marks, you'll need to escape those.