How do I return a CSV from a Pylons app?

Question

I'm trying to return a CSV from an action in my webapp, and give the user a prompt to download the file or open it from a spreadsheet app. I can get the CSV to spit out onto the screen, but how do I change the type of the file so that the browser recognizes that this isn't supposed to be displayed as HTML? Can I use the csv module for this?

import csv

def results_csv(self):

    data = ['895', '898', '897']

    return data

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 26 '09 at 00:45

12

To tell the browser the type of content you're giving it, you need to set the Content-type header to 'text/csv'. In your Pylons function, the following should do the job:

response.headers['Content-type'] = 'text/csv'

answered Apr 26 '09 at 00:45

PAG

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score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 26 '09 at 02:29

9

PAG is correct, but furthermore if you want to suggest a name for the downloaded file you can also set response.headers['Content-disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=suggest.csv'

answered Apr 26 '09 at 02:29

Alex Martelli

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This helps, but the file has the name "suggest.csv.html" Any idea how to fix that? – Eric the Red Apr 26 '09 at 03:23
with both response headers (content type and content disposition) set properly? What browser is exhibiting this peculiar .html - appending behavior? – Alex Martelli Apr 27 '09 at 18:03

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 17 '09 at 19:56

Yes, you can use the csv module for this:

import csv
from cStringIO import StringIO

...

def results_csv(self):
    response.headers['Content-Type'] = 'text/csv'
    s = StringIO()
    writer = csv.writer(s)
    writer.writerow(['header', 'header', 'header'])
    writer.writerow([123, 456, 789])
    return s.getvalue()

How do I return a CSV from a Pylons app?

3 Answers3