I don’t do (or particularly like) ASP.Net development often but recently had to quickly add some ‘Export to CSV’ functionality of a displayed table to a page. Personally I would have just used ‘copy and paste’ to do it (the export) but since the user isn’t in the habit of thinking for themselves I had to create new functionality which turn out to be very nice – and even opens the door for some future more advanced functionality.<\/p>\n
Anyway, to achieve this is really easy if you use the\u00a0HttpContext.Current.Response class and add an attachment ‘header’ to your page. The header must be named ‘content-disposition<\/strong>‘ and ContentType ‘text\/csv<\/strong>‘. See the following methods I created to simply take a DataSet and convert it to ‘CSV file’:<\/p>\n This method also allows you to specify the fields you want to export – or alternatively it just use the ones in the DataSet. For example, you can use it like this:<\/p>\n The calling page can then simply have a hyperlink like this:<\/p>\n SomePage.aspx?csvexport=Yes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t do (or particularly like) ASP.Net development often but recently had to quickly add some ‘Export to CSV’ functionality of a displayed table to a page. Personally I would have just used ‘copy and paste’ to do it (the …<\/p>\n\r\npublic class CSVExportUtils\r\n{\r\n public void ExportDataSetToCSV(string title, DataSet ds, string columnNamesCSV = "")\r\n {\r\n string attachment = "attachment; filename=" + title.Replace(",", "").Replace(".", "") + ".csv";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.ClearHeaders();\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.ClearContent();\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", attachment);\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "text\/csv";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Pragma", "public");\r\n if (columnNamesCSV.Length == 0)\r\n {\r\n WriteColumnName(ds);\r\n foreach (DataRow r in ds.Tables[0].Rows)\r\n {\r\n if (ds.Tables[0].Columns.Count > 0)\r\n {\r\n string value = r[0].ToString();\r\n if (value.Contains(","))\r\n value = "\\"" + value + "\\"";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(value);\r\n for (int i = 1; i < ds.Tables[0].Columns.Count; i++)\r\n {\r\n value = r[i].ToString();\r\n if (value.Contains(","))\r\n value = "\\"" + value + "\\"";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("," + value);\r\n }\r\n }\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(Environment.NewLine);\r\n }\r\n }\r\n else\r\n {\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(columnNamesCSV);\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(Environment.NewLine);\r\n string[] columns = columnNamesCSV.Split(',');\r\n foreach (DataRow r in ds.Tables[0].Rows)\r\n {\r\n string value = r[columns[0]].ToString();\r\n if (value.Contains(","))\r\n value = "\\"" + value + "\\"";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(value);\r\n for (int i = 1; i < columns.Length; i++)\r\n {\r\n value = r[columns[i]].ToString();\r\n if (value.Contains(","))\r\n value = "\\"" + value + "\\"";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("," + value);\r\n }\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(Environment.NewLine);\r\n }\r\n }\r\n\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.End();\r\n }\r\n private static void WriteColumnName(DataSet ds)\r\n {\r\n StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();\r\n if (ds.Tables[0].Columns.Count > 0)\r\n {\r\n string value = ds.Tables[0].Columns[0].Caption;\r\n if (value.Contains(","))\r\n value = "\\"" + value + "\\"";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(value);\r\n for (int i = 1; i < ds.Tables[0].Columns.Count; i++)\r\n {\r\n value = ds.Tables[0].Columns[i].Caption;\r\n if (value.Contains(","))\r\n value = "\\"" + value + "\\"";\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("," + value);\r\n }\r\n }\r\n HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(Environment.NewLine);\r\n }\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n\r\nif (Request.QueryString["csvexport"] != null)\r\n{\r\n CSVExportUtils csvExportUtils = new CSVExportUtils();\r\n csvExportUtils.ExportDataSetToCSV(fileName, dataSet, "Field1,Field2,...");\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n