I absolutely despise parsing CSV files because you have to know the column indexes for all the fields you want to read, but they could be in a different order for a different file. This makes it to where you have to sanity check the file first and it's going to be different for every file you want to parse. I did kinda find a way around it.
$header = array_flip(fgetcsv($fh));
This will create an array where the header title is an key to the column index
Array(
'column1' => 0,
'column2' => 1,
'column3' => 2,
...
)
This is helpful, but you still have to put something like...
while($data = fgetcsv($fh)) {
$column1 = $data[$header['column1']];
...
}
That is nice, but not very simple and a pain to write every time you need to parse a file. So I did what any natural dev would do and wrote my own library that will do it all for me.
composer require godsgood33/csv-reader
Then all you have to do is create a reader object and start parsing.
So given the following file:
ID | Name | Phone Number | Email | State
1 | Ryan | 123-456-7890 | ryan@example.com | IN
2 | John | 234-567-8901 | john@example.com | GA
$csv = new Reader($file);
do
{
$name = $csv->Name;
$phone = $csv->PhoneNumber;
$email = $csv->Email;
} while($csv->next());
The library removes any non-alphanumeric characters [A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _] from the header titles so that they are valid properties (so the space is removed from "Phone Number").
There are a couple different options you can pass in as an array when you create the object.
[
'delimiter' => ',' // character that splits the fields
'enclosure' => '"' // character the encloses a field should it contain the delimiter
'header' => 0 // default 0-based index for what row the header is on
'required_headers' => [] // array of headers (post sanitizing) of fields you want to require are present in the file before any parsing can take place
]
So if you wanted to require the ID, Name, and Email fields your object instantiation would look like:
$csv = new Reader($file, [
'required_headers' => [
'ID','Name','Email'
]
]);
Other fields would still be available for use, but are optional fields, so you'd want to validate them before using them. If a column header is not present, it simply returns NULL.
This library can also be used for remote files, but currently only supports http(s). However, it would not be recommended for large remote files.
godsgood33
/
csv-reader
This library is to create a simpler way to parse CSV files.
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.
$header = array_flip(fgetcsv($fh));
/*
array(
'column1' => 0,
'column2' => 1,
'column3' => 2,
...
)
*/
This allows you the ability to use the header title as an index into the data array.
foreach($data = fgetcsv($fh)) {
// $data is now a…
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