如何进行文件下载而不是保存在服务器上？

Question

  $filename = "PM.xls";
  $exists = file_exists('PM.xls');
  if($exists)
  {
           unlink($filename);
  }
           $filename = "PM.xls";
           $fp = fopen($filename, "wb");
           $sql = "SELECT DATE_FORMAT(jobcard.Open_date_time,' %d-%b-%y') AS datee,vehicles_data.Frame_no, jobcard.Jobc_id,jobcard.serv_nature,jobcard.Customer_name,jobc_invoice.Lnet, jobc_invoice.Pnet, jobc_invoice.Snet, jobcard.Mileage,customer_data.cust_type,vehicles_data.model_year,jobcard.Veh_reg_no,jobcard.comp_appointed, customer_data.mobile,IF(variant_codes.Make IS NULL,'Others',variant_codes.Make) as make FROM `jobcard` LEFT OUTER JOIN jobc_invoice ON jobcard.Jobc_id=jobc_invoice.Jobc_id LEFT OUTER JOIN vehicles_data ON jobcard.Vehicle_id=vehicles_data.Vehicle_id LEFT OUTER JOIN variant_codes ON vehicles_data.Model=variant_codes.Model LEFT OUTER JOIN customer_data ON jobcard.Customer_id=customer_data.Customer_id ORDER BY `make` ASC";

           $result=mysqli_query($conn,$sql) or die(mysqli_error($sql));
           $schema_insert = "";
           $schema_insert_rows = "";

           while($row = mysqli_fetch_row($result))
           {
            $insert = $row[0]. "\t" .$row[1]. "\t".$row[2]. "\t".$row[3]. "\t".$row[4]. "\t".$row[5]. "\t".$row[6]. "\t".$row[7]. "\t".$row[8]. "\t".$row[9]. "\t".$row[10]. "\t".$row[11]. "\t".$row[12]. "\t".$row[13]. "\t".$row[14]. "\t".$row[15];
           $insert .= "
";               //       serialize($assoc)
           fwrite($fp, $insert);
           }

Above code successfully creates the file on server but can't replace it, Instead of creating the file on server i want it download the file on user end. Should I use any excel library as I have to name excel sheet as well.

Answer 1

First, you creating TSV file with XLS extension. If you need to create XLS document, you should use PHPExcel or so.

If CSV is enough for you, there are fputcsv available since 5.1 and you can stream file data directly to the user agent.

$filename = "PM.csv";

header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: text/csv');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.addcslashes($filename, '\\"').'"');
$fp = fopen('php://output', 'wb');

// ...

while($row = mysqli_fetch_row($result))
{
    fputcsv($fp, $row, ',', '"');
}
fclose($fp);