Client CSV

No-flash client-side helpers for downloading CSVs that Just Work.

A number of strategies increase the likliness that you can open the CSV in Microsoft Excel without using the Import Wizzard:

• The file is UTF-16 encoded with a BOM. For some reason, this works. Thanks Microsoft.

I guess that's about it.

On cool browsers, the download attribute of your <a> tag is used to trigger the download, and the file content is injected as a data-url. Apparently this can have problems for files bigger than 2MB, but I haven't hit any yet, so...

On Internet Explorere 10+, which does not recognize the download attribute, msSaveOrOpenBlob is used to trigger the download, and the contents are created as a Blob. The user may get a warning on pageload. Sorry. Sometimes life sucks.

For other browsers, it explodes, throwing Error. whee...

Install

$ npm install client-csv

You can use it with browserify, amd, or just <script src="dist.js"> it to a vanilla JS project.

You should know

• You have to create the CSV as a big string, this library does not help with that. Check out papa parse.
• Whether or not the file opens correctly in Microsoft Excel depends on the Microsoft Excel language settings of the user. Yeah. Fun. For Americans, delimit your CSV with tab characters. Other places you may need commas. Don't you just love Microsoft.

var clickDownload = require('client-csv');

clickDownload(document.getElementById('dl-csv'), function(encode) {
return {
  filename: 'blah.csv',
  contents: encode.text(document.getElementById('text').value),
};
});

clickDownload(document.getElementById('dl-canvas'), function(encode) {
return {
  filename: 'blah.png',
  contents: encode.canvas(document.getElementById('canvas')),
};
});