Reputation: 41

How to parse CSV with values that contain a comma?

Assuming you have a string as follows:

$str = 'one value, two value, "three, cool value", four value';

How would you make it an array as follows:

$arr = array('one value', 'two value', 'three, cool value', 'four value');

(That's all about CSV and values that contain a comma and thus are double quoted.)

Upvotes: 4

Answers (7)

Brandon McConnell

Reputation: 6119

Using str_getcsv together with array_map and trim does precisely this. You use str_getcsv to break the items into an array, and then array_map and trim to trim off the whitespace from each item.

PHP → JSON Format

WITHOUT TRIM

echo json_encode(str_getcsv('one value, two value, "three, cool value", four value'));

This produces:

// some array items include extra whitespace without `trim()`
["one value"," two value","three, cool value"," four value"]

WITH TRIM

echo json_encode(array_map('trim', str_getcsv('one value, two value, "three, cool value", four value')));

This produces:

["one value","two value","three, cool value","four value"]

PHP Format

To use the final result in JSON format, use echo json_encode(…) as I did above. Otherwise, if you would like to continue using this as a PHP array, then use var_dump(…) without json_encode. You can do it like here (including trim()):

var_dump(array_map('trim', str_getcsv('one value, two value, "three, cool value", four value')));

This produces:

array(4) {
  [0]=>
  string(9) "one value"
  [1]=>
  string(9) "two value"
  [2]=>
  string(17) "three, cool value"
  [3]=>
  string(10) "four value"
}

This is correct PHP format, the PHP equivalent of:

["one value","two value","three, cool value","four value"]

Upvotes: 1

lazzy_ms

Reputation: 1364

str_getcsv() use this function with enclosure as '\"'.

It looks like this: $csv = str_getcsv($csvstring,',','\"');

Upvotes: 1

TML

Reputation: 12966

Assuming you're using 5.3.0 or newer, use str_getcsv. If you're using an older version of PHP, try fgetcsv with the 'var' stream wrapper from here. An example of the last can be found at this codepad.

Upvotes: 2

Moe Sweet

Reputation: 3721

There are two ways.

If you're going to quote entries, quote every entries. Then explode the string with "," (with quotes).
Replace commas with something uncommon before parsing. Like {|}

Upvotes: -1

codaddict

Reputation: 454920

You can use str_getcsv

$str = 'one value, two value, "three, cool value", four value';
var_dump(str_getcsv($str));

Results:

array(4) {
  [0]=>
  string(9) "one value"
  [1]=>
  string(9) "two value"
  [2]=>
  string(17) "three, cool value"
  [3]=>
  string(10) "four value"
}

Upvotes: 5