You are telling PHP to use everything echoed as the content for your CSV file. Yes, you are doing so after you echo your HTML, but it doesn't matter; it is all processed at the same time.
Let me Explain:
When you use the header()
method, you are telling the browser that the content it is receiving is of a certain type. In your case, you are telling it that the content it is to receive is a CSV document that it should download.
It does not matter where header()
is placed within the file, as long as it is before the print
or readFile
statements.
So essentially what your browser is doing is reading the entirety of the page, including the HTML as plain text for a CSV document. Remember that while PHP will process itself in order, the browser receives all of the information from the server at the same time, and since you are telling it to download the document as a CSV, it takes the whole page.
So what do you do?
My advice to you is to put the printing code in a separate external PHP document and link to it, rather than trying to do it on a page that echoes HTML.