PHP generated CSV file has two blank lines at the top of the file

Question

I've a issue while generating CSV file using php (fputcsv function). CSV File data is fine but interms of formatting generated file has 2 blank lines at the top of the file. Not sure where it is coming from. Can someone help with this?

var_dump($header); gives me below. here 'x','x' is two blank lines at the top.

x
x
    array(16) {
      [0]=>
      string(14) "DataProviderID"
      [1]=>
      string(12) "DataProvider"
      [2]=>
      string(8) "FamilyID"
      [3]=>
      string(10) "FamilyName"
      [4]=>
      string(10) "SecurityID"
      [5]=>
      string(4) "Name"
      [6]=>
      string(10) "PrimaryRic"
      [7]=>
      string(13) "Administrator"
      [8]=>
      string(16) "IsAdminEULocated"
      [9]=>
      string(21) "IsAdminOnEsmaRegister"
      [10]=>
      string(25) "IsBenchmarkOnEsmaRegister"
      [11]=>
      string(26) "IsBenchmarkOnAdminRegister"
      [12]=>
      string(23) "HasEUListedFundTracking"
      [13]=>
      string(25) "HasEUListedFutureOrOption"
      [14]=>
      string(20) "IsAdminPre2016Active"
      [15]=>
      string(24) "IsBenchmarkPre2018Active"
    }
    DataProviderID  DataProvider    FamilyID    FamilyName  SecurityID  Name    PrimaryRic  Administrator   IsAdminEULocated    IsAdminOnEsmaRegister   IsBenchmarkOnEsmaRegister   IsBenchmarkOnAdminRegister  HasEUListedFundTracking HasEUListedFutureOrOption   IsAdminPre2016Active    IsBenchmarkPre2018Active
    2   MSCI    36  MSCI Main Indices - Americas    17964   THE WORLD INDEX SMALL CAP-106230    .dMIWO000S0PUS  MSCI Limited    1   1   0   99  99  99  99  0
    2   MSCI    16730   MSCI Sector Indices - Europe Series 2   17996   EUROPE/OFFICE ELECTRONICS-106978    .dMIEU0OE00PUS  MSCI Limited    1   1   0   99  99  99  99  0

My code is as below:

<?php 
require_once '../upload/functions.php'; 

$connectionInfo = getdb();
#$connectionInfo = sqlsrv_connect(DB_HOST, $connectionInfo);

if ($connectionInfo === false ) {
    die (print_r(sqlsrv_errors(), true));
}

$sql = "SELECT * FROM <tablename>;";
$result = sqlsrv_query($connectionInfo, $sql);

if (!$result) die ('Couldn\'t fetch records');

$headers = array();

foreach (sqlsrv_field_metadata($result) as $fieldMetadata) {
    $headers[] = $fieldMetadata['Name'];
}

#var_dump($headers);

$fp = fopen('php://output', 'w');
if ($fp && $result) {
    header('Content-Type: text/csv');
    header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="KYBAttributes.csv"');
    header('Pragma: no-cache');
    header('Expires: 0');
   fputcsv($fp, array_values($headers),"\t");
    while ($row = sqlsrv_fetch_array($result, SQLSRV_FETCH_ASSOC)) {
        $row = str_replace('"', '', $row);
        fputs($fp, implode("\t", $row)."\n");       
    }
    die;
}
?>

Please note that closing php tag '?>' is not the issue here.

the extra output is not in the code you show. make sure ../upload/functions.php does not contain whitespace after the PHP closing tag. — Gordon, May 22 '18 at 09:11
As suggested by @Gordon I removed any white spaces in included by and also, removed closing '?>' php tag that fixed the issue. Thanks for the guidance..really appreciate that. — Zulfiqar Dholkawala, May 22 '18 at 09:21

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 22 '18 at 09:22

Your source files contain the Personal Home-Page closing tag, ?>, followed by a newline. PHP is required to reproduce all lines not included within <? tags exactly. Therefore, any source file with unwanted newlines will cause newlines in the output, because that's what you've requested by including them.

PHP generated CSV file has two blank lines at the top of the file

1 Answers1