By pan69 on

Hi guys,

I need some help with the form API. I'm creating an admin module to capture some content management tasks for my client on a single page. This page shows a table with some data and I want my client to be able to export this data to a CSV file.

I can use the form API to build the form with the button etc. But how would I let this export button open up a new browser window that simply dumps a CSV output of the content. Also, this page can only be accessible to logged in users of course.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Luke

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

petebarnett’s picture

petebarnett commented

Hey Luke,

The Views module is designed for visually building queries, and outputting the results in many forms.
http://drupal.org/project/views

Although views doesn't come with a plugin for CSV export by default, the Views Bonus Pack does...
http://drupal.org/project/views_bonus

Hope this helps.

Peter

pan69’s picture

pan69 commented

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply. I know about views but I'm not using it. Never will... :)

Cheers,
Luke

petebarnett’s picture

petebarnett commented

Hi Luke,

In that case, I guess you'd just have to make a page mapping using the menu system, and set the form '#action' attribute to submit to that custom page. For example, in hook_menu() set up your custom url:

    $items['export/csv'] = array(
      'page callback' => 'export_csv',
      'access arguments' => array('foo'),
      'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
    );

then write the page callback function that does the CSV stuff:

function export_csv() {

	// get the form variables you need from $_REQUEST

	drupal_set_header('Status:200 OK');
	drupal_set_header('Content-Type:text/plain');

	// print your csv content here based on the form result
}

and set the the form submit url to tie it up:

$your_form['#action'] = url('export/csv');

Cheers,
Peter

pan69’s picture

pan69 commented

Hi Peter. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that!