PHP end of line character for a csv file

Question

What is the right way to specify the end of line character of a CSV file with PHP. I have this script to write the CSV file.

<?php

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

include_once("phpshared.php");

function get_node_urls( $nodeid ) {

$nodes = new SimpleXMLElement('linkcards.xml', null, true);
$nodesarray = $nodes->xpath("//LINKCARD[@ID='$nodeid']");  

$linkstring = '';
$node = $nodesarray[0]; 
$i = 0;
foreach($node->LINKS->LINK as $url)
{ 
       $linkstring .= $i.','.$url['ID'].','.$url->TITLE.','.$url->URL.'\r\n';
       $i++;
}
echo $linkstring;

}

echo get_node_urls(trim($_REQUEST['nodeid']));

?>

If I load $linkstring there is no carriage return at the end of each line. The lines should be:

0, id1, http://link1.com
1, id2, http://link2.com

Instead they are:

0, id1, http://link1.com\r\n1, id2, http://link2.com

The CSV reader reads that line as:

id1 http://link1.com\r\n1

Is there a different way of writing the end of line for a CSV?

Answer 1

\r\n needs to be enclosed in " instead of ' so that escape sequences will be interpreted (see documentation):

$linkstring .= $i.','.$url['ID'].','.$url->TITLE.','.$url->URL."\r\n";

Answer 2

After look all over the web I found that the problem is due the Auto Detect Line Ending not being enable. Just set it on your code and it should work. It worked for me.

ini_set('auto_detect_line_endings',TRUE);

With the auto_detect enable you can parse the file as a regular file using

$lines = file('your_csv_file.csv');

On my case I'm already parsing the CSV lines using str_getcsc

function parse_my_csv($filename) { 
    $lines = file($filename);
    $data = array();
    for($i=0;$i<count($lines);$i++) { 
       array_push($data, str_getcsv($lines[$i]));
    }
 return $data;
}