i want wo write a small php program which which fetches a csv file from a remote server via cURL. It works so far and now I want to use this csv file in JS.
What is the best way to give this file from php to JS?
Create tmp file on php server and use a link to this file in JS? Is there a smarter way?
Thanks
I would use AJAX to call the PHP file, which will then use cURL to get the CSV.
If you choose to load the file in the DOM directly with PHP, the page will not appear until the cURL operation has completed. From experience, I noticed that if a page takes 30 seconds to load, it's better to show the page with a "loading..." than displaying a blank page for 29 seconds and show everything in the last second.
By the way, using cURL and calling with AJAX is also a way to circumvent Same-domain AJAX.
I wouldn't suggest to use PHP code in the JS, as it would remove the possibility to cache/minify the JS efficiently, if you choose to do so down the road. Also, it's not pretty.
How I would do it;
Output its data in JSON, its probably going to look like this
"{"1":{"col1":"hey","col2":"hey2"},"2":{"col1":"heyhey","col2":"heyhey2"}}"
Display data in a table, probably using dataTables or something equivalent.
If the file is guaranteed to be needed on the page you'd be best off adding the content directly into the page as it is loaded: either in a hidden DOM element, or most likely as a JavaScript variable. If you already have the file you're best option would likely be to translate it into a form that is closer to what you expect the JavaScript to deal with, most likely a JSON structure. Optionally if it's large you may be better off using logical Javascript code to minimize additional processing to be done on the client side. Either way this will eliminate the need for an additional request and, less importantly, delayed processing.
If the file is not guaranteed to be used and the PHP curl is serving as something like a reverse proxy with unknown input, then exposing an endpoint and AJAX'ing it in would likely make more sense. If you're using an RDBMS then using some form of CLOB field in a temporary table in the database may make more sense, but otherwise a temporary file or just an in-memory object would work depending on your needs.
You don't need to create a temp file on server you can use simple php in javascript
<script>alert("<?php echo $curlresult;?>")</script>
