Almost a year ago, Module Monday featured the Views Datasource module, a tool for exposing custom XML and JSON feeds from a Drupal site. It's a great tool, but what if you need something a bit more... human-readable? A .doc file, or a spreadsheet for example? That's where the similarly-named but differently-focused Views Data Export module comes in.
Views Data Export provides a custom View display type optimized for producing downloadable files in a variety of formats. Need a Microsoft Excel file with a list of the latest 100 posts on your site? Looking for a Microsoft Word .doc file that collects the text of the site's top-rated articles? No problem. The module supports XLS, DOC, TXT, CVS, and XML exports with format-appropriate configure options for each one. In addition, it uses Drupal's batch processing system when it's asked to generate extremely large export files, rather than timing out or giving out-of-memory errors.
Whether you're putting together reports, giving users an easy way to download product data sheets, or conducting a quick, ad-hoc audit of your site's content, Views Data Export is a handy tool to have around. Its batch processing support makes it more reliable on large sites, and its support for a variety of "day to day" file formats means you'll spend less time juggling your data and more time making use of it.