A simple way of avoiding duplication in CSV exports. This example takes advantage of Python's `attrgetter` function to get chained attributes using strings like "attr.subattr.subattr".

generic_csv_exporter_basic.py

import csv
from operator import attrgetter


def generic_csv(csvfile, objects, fields):
    writer = csv.writer(csvfile, quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL)
    row_headers = fields.keys()
    writer.writerow(row_headers)

    for obj in objects:
        row = [attrgetter(fields[header])(obj) for header in row_headers]
        for count, column in enumerate(row):
            if callable(column):
                row[count] = column()
            if type(column) is unicode:
                row[count] = column.encode('utf8')
        writer.writerow(row)

    return csvfile

generic_csv_exporter_django.py

import csv
from operator import attrgetter
from collections import OrderedDict

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from myapp.models import UserProfile


def generic_csv(csvfile, objects, fields):
    """
    Accepts a queryset and writes the fields specified in the fields dictionary
    to the passed csvfile.

    Chained attributes are handled by Python's builtin `attrgetter` function
    """
    writer = csv.writer(csvfile, quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL)
    row_headers = fields.keys()
    writer.writerow(row_headers)

    for obj in objects:
        row = [attrgetter(fields[header])(obj) for header in row_headers]
        for count, column in enumerate(row):
            if callable(column):
                row[count] = column()
            if type(column) is unicode:
                row[count] = column.encode('utf8')
        writer.writerow(row)

    return csvfile
    

def csv_view(request):
    """
    View function that returns a CSV formatted list of site users.
    Presumes that there is a user profile model defined and
    associated with the User model via a OneToOneRelationship.
    
    It's important to use select_related here otherwise each profile
    will have to be queried for the city and avatar each time.
    """
    response = HttpResponse(mimetype='text/csv')
    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=site-users.csv"
    fields = OrderedDict([
        ("First name", "first_name"),
        ("Last name", "last_name"),
        ("Email", "email"),
        ("City", "profile.city"),
        ("Avatar", "profile.avatar"),
    ])
    return generic_csv(response, User.objects.select_related('profile').all(), fields)