How to Extract and Display CSV Data Using PHP - Complete Guide

M66 2025-06-18

What is a CSV File?

CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a text format used to store tabular data, where each row represents a record and each column represents a field in the record. It is widely used for data exchange and processing across different platforms. CSV files are easy to read and edit, making them a popular choice in various fields, including business, research, and data analysis.

CSV files are commonly used for exporting spreadsheet data, and their simplicity makes them ideal for data storage and processing. Due to their efficient structure, CSV files play an important role in large-scale data analysis and mining.

How to Extract and Display CSV Data Using PHP

For PHP developers, extracting and displaying data from CSV files is a common task. PHP provides built-in functions like fopen()

In this code, fopen() is used to open the "data.csv" file in read-only mode, and fgetcsv() reads each line of the CSV file. The data from each line is stored in the $data array, resulting in a two-dimensional array containing all the CSV data.

Step 2: Displaying CSV Data

To present the CSV data on a webpage, we typically need to display it in an HTML table. You can use PHP's array and loop functions to build the table and insert the data row by row into the table cells.

Here is the code to convert the CSV data into an HTML table:


echo "<table>";
foreach ($data as $row) {
    echo "<tr>";
    foreach ($row as $cell) {
        echo "<td>" . htmlspecialchars($cell) . "</td>";
    }
    echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";

This code uses PHP's foreach loop to iterate over each row of the data and display it in an HTML table. The htmlspecialchars() function is used to escape special characters, which helps prevent XSS attacks.

Complete Code Example

Here is a complete code example that combines the two steps, reading the CSV file and displaying the data in an HTML table:


$file = fopen("data.csv", "r");
$data = [];
while (!feof($file)) {
    $line = fgetcsv($file);
    array_push($data, $line);
}
fclose($file);

echo "<table>";
foreach ($data as $row) {
    echo "<tr>";
    foreach ($row as $cell) {
        echo "<td>" . htmlspecialchars($cell) . "</td>";
    }
    echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";

This code reads the CSV file line by line and displays the data in an HTML table on the webpage.

Conclusion

This article explains how to extract data from a CSV file using PHP and display it on a webpage in an HTML table format. By using PHP's built-in file operation functions like fopen() and fgetcsv(), you can easily read CSV files and use arrays and loops to display the data. Mastering these techniques will help you efficiently handle and present CSV data for analysis or other purposes.