Creating a Pretty CSV Download
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Creating a Pretty CSV Download¶
Buzzword time! Services! Dependency Injection! Dependency Injection Container!
Hold on, because we’re about to discover what these terms mean, how core they are to Symfony, and just how simple these things really are.
Pretend that someone needs to be able to download a CSV of all of the events that have been updated during the last 24 hours. Let’s create a whole new controller class for this called ReportController, since EventController is getting a bit big:
// src/Yoda/EventBundle/Controller/ReportController.php
namespace Yoda\EventBundle\Controller;
class ReportController extends Controller
{
}
Let’s create an updatedEventsAction and use those handy annotation routes. And of course don’t forget to copy in the Route use statement for the annotation:
/**
* @Route("/events/report/recentlyUpdated.csv")
*/
public function updatedEventsAction()
{
}
Try the URL in your browser. If you see the “The controller must return a response” error like I do, then we’re good! This is proof that our controller is being executed.
Creating a CSV Response¶
First we need a custom query to find recently updated events. Should we just put this in our controller? I hope you’re screaming no. The force is strong enough in us to now put these directly in our repository class. Create a new getRecentlyUpdatedEvents method in EventRepository and build a query that only returns events updated within the last 24 hours:
// src/Yoda/EventBundle/Entity/EventRepository.php
// ...
public function getRecentlyUpdatedEvents()
{
return $this->createQueryBuilder('e')
->andWhere('e.updatedAt > :since')
->setParameter('since', new \DateTime('24 hours ago'))
->getQuery()
->execute()
;
}
Let’s call this in the controller. This should be getting boring because, we always query the same way: get the entity manager, get the repository, then call a method on it:
// src/Yoda/EventBundle/Controller/ReportController.php
// ...
public function updatedEventsAction()
{
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$events = $em->getRepository('EventBundle:Event')
->getRecentlyUpdatedEvents();
// ...
}
Now we need to turn these Event objects into a CSV. I’ll write some manual code for this. Yes, there are better ways to create CSV’s, but trust me for a second. This code will help us show off one of Symfony’s most powerful features:
// src/Yoda/EventBundle/Controller/ReportController.php
// ...
public function updatedEventsAction()
{
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$events = $em->getRepository('EventBundle:Event')
->getRecentlyUpdatedEvents();
$rows = array();
foreach ($events as $event) {
$data = array($event->getId(), $event->getName(), $event->getTime()->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));
$rows[] = implode(',', $data);
}
$content = implode("\n", $rows);
// ...
}
So what does a controller always return? A Response object of course! Let’s just create one manually and pass the csv $content to it:
// src/Yoda/EventBundle/Controller/ReportController.php
// ...
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
public function updatedEventsAction()
{
// ...
$content = implode("\n", $rows);
$response = new Response($content);
return $response;
}
Refresh! Gosh, that’s the prettiest CSV I’ve seen all day. Ah, but if I check the network tab in my browser, the response is text/html. I forgot to set that pesky Content-Type header. Let’s fix that:
// src/Yoda/EventBundle/Controller/ReportController.php
// ...
public function updatedEventsAction()
{
// ...
$content = implode("\n", $rows);
$response = new Response($content);
$response->headers->set('Content-Type', 'text/csv');
return $response;
}
This time Chrome sees that it’s a CSV and downloads it for me. There’s nothing new so far, but we’re writing great code.
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