Tab Delimited CSV Format

Would definitely be useful to roll this into the module as a feature - google merchant center also uses tsv format. Thanks for sharing your hack..

I'm using 6.x. I copied a tab character from a text editor (gedit on Linux) and just pasted it into the separator field in the export style options.
Not terribly user-friendly, since you see "nothing" when you come back to the config screen. But it appears to have worked perfectly - I got a tab-separated file out.

Hi DrFoo,

I need this for the exact reason kevster mentions in post #2, google merchant center.

Is the code you listed supposed to completely replace what's in:

views-data-export-csv-body.tpl.php
AND
views-data-export-csv-header.tpl.php

It looks like it should maybe only be in the first file, what should i do with the 2nd file?

the existing code in the 2nd file is:

<?php

// Print out header row, if option was selected.
if ($options['header']) {
  print implode($separator, $header) . "\r\n";
}

Just confirming that pasting a tab character from a text editor into the separator input worked for me using 7.x-3.x-dev. It seems wrong somehow, but it works.

If I paste a tab character into the separator input it works in the view preview, the values are separated by tabs, but the actual file output has no separator at all.

Any ideas?

I'm also interested in a more user-friendly approach.

If anyone could even point me in the direction of where I can hard code a tab character as the separator for when the view is output as a file this would help me a lot as a workaround for now.

Yes, I'd very much want this feature too. Actually very surprised it's not supported right now.
TAB separation is very useful, I know of cases where exploding by feeds_tamper module will only work with TAB's.

Hi,

pending a patch that allows retrieve the \ t properly I propose this solution rather "clean".

You can try this in a custom module or in your template (admin theme its not realy good its better in custom module).

function your_module_name_preprocess_views_data_export_csv_body(&$vars) {
  $vars['seperator'] = $vars['separator'] = '"\t"';
}

function your_module_name_preprocess_views_data_export_csv(&$vars) {
  $vars['seperator'] = $vars['separator'] = '"\t"';
}

function your_module_name_preprocess_views_data_export_csv_header(&$vars) {
  $vars['seperator'] = $vars['separator'] = '"\t"';
}

replace "your_module_name" by name of your module. If you want i can propose a small patch for the module for replace {tab} by real tabs.

If you want you can view the code in view_data_export_theme.inc l.130 ==> template_preprocess_views_data_export_csv_body() && template_preprocess_views_data_export_csv_header() && template_preprocess_views_data_export_csv().

Hi Problue Solutions,

Paste the following code for views-data-export-csv-header.tpl.php it works for me.

<?php

// Print out header row, if option was selected.
if ($options['header']) {
print implode($foosep = $separator==="{tab}" ? "\t" :$separator, $header) . "\r\n";
}

This issue caught my eye as I needed something similar. I implemented the attached patch based on the sample code above, however, instead of the notation "{tab}", I set it up so that it would accept "\t" in the separator field. Since this is stashed in the database with what appears to be some encoding, I had to use stripslashes() to keep it from returnin "\\t". This should allow the use of other escaped special characters as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_sequences_in_C

Marked for review.

works for me! thx robertwb!

robertwb solution did not work for me having a more complex CSV file to create. It strips out quotes to and takes commas as tab separator.

I also think that this implementation should not be done in tpl.php or in a preprocess function. So I have created a patch that add a Tab delimiter checkbox in the setting form of the cvs view.

Added Tab delimiter option to be exportable.

@Vincenzo Gambino - thanks for this - I think you are right on, putting this in the plugin class instead of the template makes perfect sense, as does making it exportable. However, it seems you're introducing a new option field specifically for tab?

I'm curious that I thought my approach which supports c-style delimiters may be more flexible - but you found it to be less so. Can you supply a use case for the more complex CSV that broke my implementation?

Thanks!

Tested patch from #15. Looks good!

Tested patch from #15. Looks good!

The patch #15 is not working with "Provide as file" option in csv settings of data export view.

@pallavi_sugandhi - can you provide some more detail? All the tests that I have done personally on this patch have been with "Provide as File" option set and I found it to be working fine.

Make sure the patch apply to dev.

Sorry for the lack of attention to your issue, please accept my apologies.

Drupal 7 is going to be end-of-life'd by the community in approximately 1 month.

As such, I am closing all non-critical looking, non-PHP compatibility issues for Views Data Export to tidy up the issue queues and reduce the noise. You can read about this on #3492246: Close down Drupal 7 issues.

If you feel like this issue has been closed by mistake, please do comment about re-opening it.
If you feel like the ticket is still relevant for the 8.x-1.x version of the module, then please search for a duplicate issue first, and if there really isn't one (and you've looked properly) then change the version on the ticket and re-open.

Thanks to everyone involved in this issue: for reporting it, and moving it along, it is truly appreciated.
The Drupal community wouldn't be what it is today without your involvement and effort, so I'm sorry that we couldn't get this issue resolved. Hopefully we'll work together in a future issue though, and get that one resolved :)