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CSV Reader

Intro

The purpose of this library is to simplify reading and parsing CSV files. I have parsed CSV files so many times and there is not really an easy way to do it. You have to know the index of the column you want to insert and it would be so much more readable if you could just use the header title itself as the field index. A while ago, I started reading the header row, flipping the array so that the index of the row elements is now the value of the field index.

This allows you the ability to use the header title as an index into the data array.

This is nice, but isn't any more readable than just using the index itself (or store the index in a variable and using that)...

So what I thought I would do is create a library that would allow you to use the header titles as field names. Here's how you do it.

Installation/Setup

Dev.to

I have done a more thorough explanation on Dev.to

• CSV-Reader
• Filter & Maps
• Links

Use

Pass your CSV filename into the class and create an object

Options

These options are available as an associative array as the second parameter of the constructor

• delimiter - , (default)
  • what character separates the fields
• enclosure - " (default)
  • what character surrounds a field should it contain the delimiter character
• escape - \ (default)
  • what character will escape an enclosure character
• header - 0 (default)
  • what row (0-based) is the header title row on
• alias - []
  • an array of aliases and what field they point to
  • [ 'name' => 'Name', 'phone' => 'PhoneNumber', 'email' => 'Email' ]
• required_headers - []
  • what headers are required to be present in the file (formatted the way they would be after invalid character removal or converting to lower case)
  • ['Name', 'PhoneNumber', 'Email']
• headerCase - int
  • an integer defining if you want to change the case of the header fields
  • Header::TO_LOWER - set all characters to lower case (e.g. 'phonenumber')
  • Header::TO_CAMEL_CASE - sets the first character to lower case and all other words first character to upper case (e.g. 'phoneNumber')

The Reader will remove any non-alphanumeric characters [^a-zA-Z0-9_].

After this is done, all you need to do is start looping until the end of the file is reached or the data you're looking for is found.

NOTE: Reader will automatically read the first row after the header after it is done parsing so DON'T use a while loop

Inside your loop you can use the header titles as field names to retrieve the data at each column

Required Headers

If there are required headers that you must have in your file you can specify them in the 'required_headers' option passed in at instantiation time.

Aliases

If you would like to specify that a field has an alias name you can specify that with the 'alias' associative array option. The key parameter is the alias and the value is the field it points to.

The above would allow you to use the either of the following:

Maps

Full Explanation

Maps in CSVReader are a way that you can read multiple fields at once and return all of them in a formatted string.

Filters

Full Explanation

Filters can be a really powerful option when parsing a file. They can be used to validate the field values before ingesting them into the system, for manipulating the data, removing or adding characters, adding in other data so that it works better in a database or HTML, or creating an object from a field value. Filters can be used along with aliases, but you MUST do the filter on the field that is in the file...not the alias. In the example above, the filter would have to be assigned to the phone field and not digits. Filters do NOT work with Maps as those already include their own callback so the filter functionality can be accomplished in the Map callback.

Links

Full Explanation

Links are a way that you can retrieve multiple fields at the same time and return them as a stdClass object or create your own object.