CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi guys,

I'm new to CiviCRM but I am an experienced PHP / Drupal coder and have developed tons of modules / themes / stuff for clients.

One of these clients is now using CiviCRM in their Intranet and has asked me to correct / improve some functionality, such as Import / Export of Contacts and Contact searches. Currently you can set the field separator for Import / Export globally in the CiviCRM settings under "Localisation".

My client has asked to add a dropdown on the Contact Export form to permit the user to chose which field separator to use in the exported CSV file. I've did some research and came to the following conclusions:

1. Change the export task form to include a dropdown with separator characters.

File: /CRM/Export/Form/Select.php

  1. on line 259, add a dropdown with field separator options
  2. on line 375, change the way the exportComponents function is called, including the separator sign from our posted dropdown.


2. Change the export task class method "exportComponents" and add an extra parameter "fieldSeparator".

File: /CRM/Export/BAO/Export.php

  1. on line 67, add parameter "fieldSeparator=','"

  2. on line 1064, add parameter to function call "self::writeCSVFromTable($exportTempTable, $headerRows, $sqlColumns, $exportMode);" to include "fieldSeparator".

  3. on line 1745, pass on parameter into function call "
CRM_Core_Report_Excel::writeCSVFile(self::getExportFileName('csv', $exportMode),
        $headerRows,
        $componentDetails,
        NULL,
        $writeHeader
      );"


3. Change the core export class and add an extra parameter "fieldSeparator"

File: /CRM/Core/Report/Excel.php

  1. on line 197, add a parameter to function writeCSVFile() to receive a "fieldSeparator". Set this parameter to a static class property for later usage.

  2. on line 57, check the static class property if if's properly filled in, otherwise fallback to $config->fieldSeparator;


Is this modification something the community can use, and if so, how would I have to proceed to contribute this change back to the community?