generate CSV file in browser using PHP?

[shadedecho]

I know this is like the most simple type of thing, but I can't seem to make this work.

I want to have a .php file which based on a parameter that is passed to it, it generates a particular set of data in CSV format, and I want to signal for the viewer of this page to have it automatically launch and be viewed in Excel. (the user of this page will always be on a windows machine with microsoft excel 97 or 2000).

so what I have is this:

blah.php:

<?php
header(&quot;Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel&quot;);
header(&quot;Content-Disposition: inline; filename=blah.csv&quot;);

echo &quot;field1,field2,field3&quot;;
echo $param.&quot;,val2,val3&quot;;

exit;
?>

then in the browser, its simply called by:

blah.php?param=val1

So, when I do this with just typing that into a new browser window, I get my data printed out fine, but it doesn't launch Excel to open the data, just prints it in text.

But, if i have a javascript launch a new popup window (which is how my application will do it) with that blah.php?param=val1 as the source file, i get an error that says "Excel could not open the file

http://....."

and then the next error box after it talks about "...could be one of several reasons" and it mentions things like the file/path not existing, or the file being in use, or that the name of the workbook that i'm trying to save is the same as a read-only one.

None of these errors make any sense to me. I think I must not be sending the correct/enough headers to tell Excel how to launch. Can someone please tell me what I need to do?

 

[shadedecho]

correction, I get that MS Excel error even if it manually type the address into a browser window. Clearly, the MIME type is telling Excel to start loading the document, but something after that fails.