#ecsv 0.3

2011 (c) Nicolas R Dufour nicolas.dufour@nemoworld.info

ecsv is a simple Erlang CSV parser able to read a file or string and sending back to an erlang process events when a line is parsed.

ecsv is under MIT. See NOTICE file for more details.

##Requirements

• Erlang/OTP R13/R14
• GNU Make

##Design

Ecsv is using a stateful parser in which you have to:

• create a initial state with options and a processing function
• provide a flow of character to the main parsing function ([parse_with_character])

##How to use it

Create a function that will accept 2 arguments:

• an element which can be
  • {eof} if the flow had ended
  • {newline, NewLine} for each parsed line
• a current state (defaulted to [])

Example: how to count the lines:

MyFun = fun(_NewLine, Counter) ->
    % NewLine contains an array of strings
    Counter + 1.

Then call ecsv with the default state set to 0:

{ok, IoDevice} = file:open("/path/to/my.csv", [read]),
{ok, FinalCounter} = ecsv:process_csv_file_with(IoDevice, MyFun, 0)

FinalCounter will have the number of parsed lines.

Take a look at the examples in the directory examples. A basic benchmark accepting one argument as the csv filename will parse it and display the number of parsed lines.

##Notes

This parser is based on the blog post written by Andy Till located here http://andrewtill.blogspot.com/2009/12/erlang-csv-parser.html.

This parser supports well formed csv files which are

• a set of lines ending with a \n
• each line contains a set of fields separated with a comma (,)
• each field value can be enclosed with single (') or double quote (")
• each field value can be empty
• any \r is ignored

Example:

SC_Group_ID,SC_Group_Desc,SC_GroupCommod_ID,SC_GroupCommod_Desc,SC_Geography_ID,SortOrder,SC_GeographyIndented_Desc,SC_Commodity_ID,SC_Commodity_Desc,SC_Attribute_ID,SC_Attribute_Desc,SC_Unit_ID,SC_Unit_Desc,Year_ID,SC_Frequency_ID,SC_Frequency_Desc,Timeperiod_ID,Timeperiod_Desc,Amount
2,"Supply and use",9,"Barley",1,0.800,"United States",1,"Barley",34,"Imports, trade year",7,"1,000 metric tons",1960,3,"Annual",114,"MY Oct-Sep",248
2,"Supply and use",9,"Barley",1,0.800,"United States",1,"Barley",34,"Imports, trade year",7,"1,000 metric tons",1961,3,"Annual",114,"MY Oct-Sep",326

Please note:

• This parser has no failsafe mechanism if the file is badly formed! But the line a,,,,,\n is perfectly fine.
• This parser doesn't allow a return (\n) in a field value!