[thelist] CSV & Excel
kristina
ml at kfxdesign.net
Tue Feb 18 10:48:01 CST 2003
thelist,
3 problems (apologies for length of post)
Using PHP & MySQL (and lots of tutorial help off
the net) I've managed to create a CSV file
upload using PHP to a MySQL database. When I
edit CSV files I tend to edit via a text editor
(HTML-Kit) and have no problems.
My problem arises as soon as the data is handed
over to the client. They use Excel to
edit the CSV file. For the CSV file to work the
first two fields are null as they are an id
field and a timestamp field, and are
automatically updated when the file is inserted.
When I try and 'save as' from Excel it does two
things - it removes the first two columns (my
two null fields) and changes all the date
formats to dd/mm/yy - when I need them to be
yyyy-mm-dd.
How do I insert a Null field into Excel and how
do I make it keep the date format that I need.
I tried to create the file first as *.xls then
save as *.csv but when I upload it to the
database - it uploads nothing.....!
The other thing that I'm having trouble with is
comma's within a CSV file. I've tried
,,"test data, test data",other data,
but that just causes the bit after the comma,
that isn't a seperator, to move into the next
field, and ultimately doesn't work.... I've
tried escaping the comma and I just get an
error.
The stuff I found on the net about escaping a
comma, suggested doing this via Excel as that
would add all the necessary bits to the CSV
file. I didn't have any joy there, partly for
the above two problems (null fields and date
fields)
Any tutorial pointers would be grand.
;o)
--
bfn
.kristina
ml at kfxdesign.net
kfxdesign.net
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