Exporting a csv file with web.py

This is how you export a csv file and get the browser to recognize that its a csv file and popups the download window with web.py.  Lets say we have a database with a table called users and you want to create a csv file that contains all the users with their names and id's here is how you do it.

class export:
  def GET(self):
    i = web.input()
    users = web.select(’users’, vars=locals())
    csv = []
    csv.append(”id,name\n“)
    for user in users:
      row = []
      row.append(user.id)
      row.append(user.name)
      csv.append(”,“.join(row))

     web.header(’Content-Type’,’text/csv‘)
     web.header(’Content-disposition’, ’attachment; filename=export.csv‘)
     print "".join(csv)
     return

I export the csv file  in a GET method of a class called export which i map in the urls list to '/export','export'

A quick breakdown, do a database query and iterate over the IterBetter object create a row and appending a comma seperated string to the csv list. Then at the end you send the appropirate HTTP headers , the first telling the type of the file and the second setting the filename and extension.