RenderedCsv

RenderedCsv provides a render_csv method to your Rails 3.0+ controllers.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rendered_csv'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install rendered_csv

In your controllers, simply call render_csv instead of render. This will setup the appropriate headers and render your CSV file.

render_csv has two optional parameters, filename and template. If not specified, filename defaults to the name of the current action.

This example would respond with a file named widgets.csv, rendering the index template in the process:

class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @widgets = Widget.all
    respond_to do |format|
      format.csv do
        render_csv('widgets')
      end
    end
  end
end

You could render a different template: render_csv('widgets', 'other_index')

Or you could just use the defaults to get index.csv from the index template: render_csv

The meat of this gem was taken from Clinton R. Nixon's answer to this StackOverflow question. I just wanted to stop copy-pasting the code from project to project.

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request