Topic: exporting from a php mysql system to csv... any ideas??????? (Page 1 of 1)

HI guys need some help on this. Ok I got my program up and running - its a simple contacts manager where users manage contacts etc. I need to make an export facility i.e. that is to export all the contacts data in my db as a csv file that can be imported by lets say.. outlook. However theres a little issue here and that is that my system is set such that a single contact can have like unlimited contact information i.e. 0 to 100s of fone numbers, emails etc.. I'm not very sure on what kind of algo to work on for this when you have like rows of varying length ... any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Argh.

With CVS, you are stuck outputing multiple rows for one contact, to handle the additional fields.

Outlook import with that is a mess, though, you'll most likely end up with a thousand duplicated entries.

Perhaps an alternative format is more suited.
I seem to remember that Outlook can import vcards,
I'd give that a try... or some xml based format that outlook actuall reads.

So long,

->Tyberius Prime

Well a vcard is pretty much just one vcard at a time. I need some idea to export multiple contacts. I just noticed that if I create a user defined item in outlook and create a csv from outlook - it doesn't include the user defined item - this is complicated...

XML Vcards should be able to handle multiple entries,
and there's bound to be another xml format that outlook talks.