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**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 11, 2006, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/output-non-html-csv-from-rails/95031 "2006-01-11T17:04:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/output-non-html-csv-from-rails/95031/1 "2006-01-11T17:04:35Z")
Hi,
I want to offer a CSV download of data in my Rails app (eg. An “Export
to Excel” link to grab the current view of tabulated data).
However, I can’t seem to break-out of the Rails framework to output this
non-HTML data. Even if I eliminate my layout template from my view, the
most basic view (no HTML) will still wrap the output in
tags.
Does anyone have a recommended way to do this within Rails?
Thank you!
Matt
–
Matt C. Wagner
Information Security Analyst
Network Intrusion Detection
Security Operations Center
Corporate Information Security
Wells Fargo Bank
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**Author:**  [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/output-non-html-csv-from-rails/95031/2 "2006-01-11T17:14:58Z")
you need to change the Content-Type that you send to the browser to be
of type CSV. Something like Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel
[http://railswiki.pdxruby.org/HowtoChangeTheContentType.html](http://railswiki.pdxruby.org/HowtoChangeTheContentType.html)
-adam
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**Author:**  [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/output-non-html-csv-from-rails/95031/3 "2006-01-11T17:27:02Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:
> Does anyone have a recommended way to do this within Rails?
In the controller:
response.headers[‘Content-Disposition’] =\> ‘attachment’
response.headers[‘Content-Type’] =\> ‘text/csv’
render :text =\> @csv\_contents, :layout =\> false
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**Author:**  [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/output-non-html-csv-from-rails/95031/4 "2006-01-11T21:02:23Z")
Hi Matt,
Have you tried send\_data or send\_file which are " Methods for sending
files
and streams to the browser instead of rendering."
I have used send\_data to send and image to the browser. Check out my
howto
…
[http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoSecureFormsWithNoisyImages](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoSecureFormsWithNoisyImages)
-bakki kudva
On 1/11/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)
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**Author:**  [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 11:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/output-non-html-csv-from-rails/95031/5 "2006-01-11T23:31:48Z")
Mr Wagner:
On Jan 11, 2006, at 8:02 AM, [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)
[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> Does anyone have a recommended way to do this within Rails?
render\_without\_layout ‘template’ which defaults to the same name as
your action.
Cheers,
Hasan D. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)