Dataset CSV Export

What a survey owner reaches for first — a file of the answers to open in Excel or send on — is not there; Google Forms puts Download responses (.csv) in the response page's own menu. The answers already leave the survey as a dataset, which a Sheet imports and a Dashboard binds (datasets), and a Program serves its funnel status the same way. A file is one more reader of that same read, so it is built once for every dataset provider rather than once per type.

Two exports, two capabilities

A resource has two kinds of thing to take out, and each already has its generic seam:

Portable moves a resource's content — a survey's model, not its answers — so responses are never a Portable format. A Sheet is both, and its Portable CSV export already writes its rows with the column choice and filters the export dialog offers, so a dataset provider that is also Portable keeps its own export and gets no second command.

What it adds

• One command. The resource page's overflow menu shows Export CSV for every type that declares datasetProvider and not portable, read off ResourceDefinitionMap by checkHasCapability as the Import and Export commands are. Nothing is added per type.
• One read. The command runs dataset.readDataset for the open resource, the read a Dashboard binding makes, and writes its columns and rows. A dataset over the row cap exports what was read and says so in the warning the blade shows, rather than implying the file is complete (dataset row-cap warning). The file is named after the resource.
• Columns read the way a person reads them. DatasetColumn gains an optional title, the header a file prints in place of the column's name when set; the survey dataset sets it to each question's title, so the file reads "How did you hear about us?" rather than question3. The survey dataset also gains its submission time as its first column, and in an Identified survey the respondent after it (survey response modes) — columns a Dashboard binding can use too, a chart of responses over time among them. A checkbox question's answers join into one cell separated by ; and a space.
• Every cell is neutralised as a formula. A dataset may hold text typed by anonymous respondents on a public page, opened by the owner in a spreadsheet, and the command cannot know which provider's text is trusted, so it treats all of it as untrusted. A cell starting with =, +, -, @, a tab or a line break is quoted with a tab placed before that first character — the one mitigation OWASP reports surviving an Excel save and reopen. escapeUntrustedCsvCell already does this for the program's participant links, a sibling of escapeCsvCell rather than a change to it, since the Sheet's own export must round-trip the owner's formulas-as-text unchanged.

No procedure is added: the export is a client transform of what dataset.readDataset already returns.

flowchart LR
  CMD["Export CSV<br/>datasetProvider, not portable"] --> READ[dataset.readDataset]
  READ --> HEAD[Headers: title, else name]
  HEAD --> CELLS[Cells neutralised as formulas]
  CELLS --> FILE["name.csv"]

What is deliberately not in it

• No live-synced spreadsheet (Google Forms' linked Sheet). A Sheet can import the dataset today; a live link is realtime dataset refresh.
• No other file formats. A dataset is rows and columns, and CSV opens everywhere; an XLSX writer for datasets would duplicate the Sheet's, which a Sheet importing the dataset already reaches.

Key files

Sources

• Google Forms Help — view and manage form responses — downloading all responses as a CSV from the response page's menu.
• OWASP — CSV injection — the formula trigger characters and the tab-inside-quotes prefix that survives Excel re-saving.