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

The following approached worked well for my case and causes the browser to open the appropriate application for the CSV type after downloading.

def index
  respond_to do |format|
    format.csv { return index_csv }
  end
end

def index_csv
  send_data(
    method_that_returns_csv_data(...),
    :type => 'text/csv',
    :filename => 'export.csv',
    :disposition => 'attachment'
  )
end

Answer 2

There is a plugin called FasterCSV that handles this wonderfully.

Answer 3

If you're simply wanting to get the csv database yourself from the console you can do so in a few lines

tags = [Model.column_names]
rows = tags + Model.all.map(&:attributes).map(&:to_a).map { |m| m.inject([]) { |data, pair| data << pair.last } }
File.open("ss.csv", "w") {|f| f.write(rows.inject([]) { |csv, row|  csv << CSV.generate_line(row) }.join(""))}

Answer 4

You need to set the Content-Type header in your response, then send the data. Content_Type: application/vnd.ms-excel should do the trick.

You may also want to set the Content-Disposition header so that it looks like an Excel document, and the browser picks a reasonable default file name; that's something like Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="#{suggested_name}.xls"

I suggest using the fastercsv ruby gem to generate your CSV, but there's also a builtin csv. The fastercsv sample code (from the gem's documentation) looks like this:

csv_string = FasterCSV.generate do |csv|
  csv << ["row", "of", "CSV", "data"]
  csv << ["another", "row"]
# ...
end