in rails, how to return records as a csv file

Question

I have a simple database table called \"Entries\":

class CreateEntries < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :entries do |t|
      t.st         


        

Answer 1

Another way to do this without using FasterCSV:

Require ruby's csv library in an initializer file like config/initializers/dependencies.rb

require "csv"

As some background the following code is based off of Ryan Bate's Advanced Search Form that creates a search resource. In my case the show method of the search resource will return the results of a previously saved search. It also responds to csv, and uses a view template to format the desired output.

  def show
    @advertiser_search = AdvertiserSearch.find(params[:id])
    @advertisers = @advertiser_search.search(params[:page])
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # show.html.erb
      format.csv  # show.csv.erb
    end
  end

The show.csv.erb file looks like the following:

<%- headers = ["Id", "Name", "Account Number", "Publisher", "Product Name", "Status"] -%>
<%= CSV.generate_line headers %>
<%- @advertiser_search.advertisers.each do |advertiser| -%>
<%- advertiser.subscriptions.each do |subscription| -%>
<%- row = [ advertiser.id,
            advertiser.name,
            advertiser.external_id,
            advertiser.publisher.name,
            publisher_product_name(subscription),
            subscription.state ] -%>
<%=   CSV.generate_line row %>
<%- end -%>
<%- end -%>

On the html version of the report page I have a link to export the report that the user is viewing. The following is the link_to that returns the csv version of the report:

<%= link_to "Export Report", formatted_advertiser_search_path(@advertiser_search, :csv) %>