CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javacsv
nicciglen
nicciglen

Reputation: 65

Is there a Java library which will enable me to easily extract data from CSV text held in a String

I'm looking for a Java library which will enable me to easily extract data from a specific column (or multiple columns) of CSV text held in memory e.g. in a String.

For example, extract each 'town' value in the records below into an ArrayList<String> object or String[]. Or even further, extract all 'town' and 'country' values from every record.

... I preferably need a solution that doesn't rely on the columns being in fixed positions.

ADDRESS|HOUSE_NO|STREET|TOWN|CITY|COUNTY|COUNTRY
DATA|51|Hill Road|Reading|Berkshire|United Kingdom
DATA|78|Crescent Road|Wallingford|Oxfordshire|United Kingdom
DATA|5|Bonny Crescent|Swindon|Whiltshire|United Kingdom

... note that the entire CSV section in the above example is contained in memory in a single String.

I have already been looking at the option of using an in-memory database engine like H2, but it can't seem to handle running SQL queries against CSV text that's held in memory e.g. in a String. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance

Upvotes: 0

Views: 188

Answers (2)

Lucas
Lucas

Reputation: 14969

I use opencsv in all my projects. Its a pretty good library, and is available in Maven central so if you are using maven its really easy to add to your project.

Upvotes: 2

corsiKa
corsiKa

Reputation: 82579

Use String.split

String[] tokens = myString.split("\\|");

But I'd like to point out that if you have a database, you shouldn't be storing it as a CSV. You should make a table and have columns for that. So I would strongly consider doing this before you put it in the database, and putting it in the proper columns at that time.

If the ENTIRE file is a single string, I'd do this:

final String delim = "\\|";
Scanner sc = new Scanner(csvFile);
String headersRaw = sc.nextLine();
String[] headers = headersRaw.split(delim);
// process headers if necessary
while(sc.hasNextLine()) {
    String[] tokens = sc.nextLine().split(delim);
    // process tokens here
}

Upvotes: 0

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