Web form to output to Excel?

[marta99]

Hello,

I am looking for a way to create a web form and have the output saved in an Excel database format (comma delineated).

Users will be requesting a free magazine and the fulfillment house wants the output in Excel format.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[GUJUm0deL]

What programming language are you using??


____________________________________
Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

 

[Foamcow]

Well firstly, Excel format and Comma Delimited (CSV) format are not the same thing.

If they want a CSV file then you simply need to output each "field" followed by a comma and a return at the end of each "record".

If they want an actual Excel file (from which they can make a CSV) then, if you are using ASP you can do something like this at the start of your page

<% Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel" %>

Then get your data however you need to

Then output an HTML table containing your data, something like (from a site I built - might not be optimum code as I'm not really an ASP coder!)

<%
	 'create an HTML table
	 Response.Write("<table border='1'>")
	 
	 'loop through the field names to get the column headings (field names)
		Response.write("<tr>")
	  j=2 'row counter
	  for i = 0 to oRSstickers.Fields.Count -1
		Response.write("<td><b>" & oRSstickers(i).Name & "</b></td>")
	  Next
	  Response.Write("</tr>")

	 'here comes the data!
	 Do while NOT oRSstickers.EOF
		Response.Write("<tr>")
		Response.Write("<td>" & oRSstickers("id") & "</td>")
		Response.Write("<td>" & oRSstickers("date") & "</td>")
		Response.Write("<td>" & oRSstickers("name") & "</td>")
		Response.Write("<td>" & oRSstickers("email") & "</td>")
		Response.Write("<td>" & oRSstickers("telephone") & "</td>")
		Response.Write("</tr>")
	
		oRSstickers.MoveNext
	Loop
	Response.Write("</table>")

%>

You can do a similar thing with PHP although I've not done it (as far as I can recall) and I don't have an example to hand. A quick Google should turn up something.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[feherke]

Hi

And if you use Perl look at the Spreadsheet::WriteExcel module. Is incredibly easy too use.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jmcnamara/perl/WriteExcel.html

By the way, CSV is just theoretically a list of values separated by comma, like this :
[tt] Don Wilson,Bloodfist[/tt]

Practically the values may contain commas :
[tt] "Wilson, Don",Bloodfist[/tt]

And of course quotation marks too :
[tt] 'Wilson, Don "The Dragon"',Bloodfist[/tt]
[tt] "Wilson, Don \"The Dragon\"",Bloodfist[/tt]
[tt] "Wilson, Don ""The Dragon""",Bloodfist[/tt]

And here you can see the problem : CSV is not a standard format, and softwares could implement the escaping if quotation marks in different ways.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/