de-jcup / commons-csv

A minimal library for CSV data handling

Table of Contents

• README
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Contribution guide
  • Build

README

commons-csv is a small Java library to handle CSV data.

It comes without any dependencies to any external libraries - except JRE classes.

The project is licensed by MIT-License.

Note

de.jcup.commons was created based on idea of the Apache commons - with the focus on common things that don’t exist there. Unfortunately, I only now saw that there is already a similar library from Apache under the exact same name "commons-csv" (see https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-csv/). This was not intentional or deliberate. I will continue to use my library, but as I said, there is also a (probably good) alternative from Apache itself.

Installation

Gradle

Create a build.gradle file and add following dependencies:

plugins {
    id 'java'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'de.jcup.commons:commons-csv:1.0.0'
}

Usage

Example 1

Create a CSV model and convert to CSV string

CSVModel model = new CSVModel("First name", "Last name", "Hobbies");(1)
model.addRow().(2)
    set("Last name", "Tregnaghi").
    set("First name", "Albert").(3)
    set("Hobbies", "Software development; Electronic games, Book reading");(4)

String csv = model.toCSVString();(5)

System.out.println(csv);

1. Creates a CSV model with named columns ("First name", "Last name", "Hobbies"). Because no additional model configuration is done, the defaults are set to Unix-Linendings, default separator ; and cells will be automatically trimmed.

2. Creates and adds a new row to model. The created row object has a fluent api.

3. We set a value for the "First name" column. The ordering does not matter here!

4. Sets a column called "Hobbies". Here we use the delimiter inside the data which lead to auto escaping of the value later

Output will be:

First name;Last name;Hobbies
Albert;Tregnaghi;"Software development; Electronic games, Book reading"(1)

1. The last column which contains the delimiter char inside, is automatically escaped with character "

Example 2

Parse a CSV string without headlines to model and fetch content by API

String csv = "Hello;World";

CSVParser parser = new CSVParser();
CSVModel model = parser.parse(csv,false);

// Because no headlines are defined/fetched, auto column names are created
// The name pattern is : "col${columnIndex}"
String value1 = model.getCellValue("col0", 0);
String value2 = model.getCellValue("col1", 0);
System.out.println(value1+" "+value2);

Output will be:

Hello World

Example 3

Parse a CSV string with headlines to model and fetch content by API

String csv = "Word1;Word2\nHello;World\nOther;Line";

CSVParser parser = new CSVParser();
CSVModel model = parser.parse(csv,true);

// We use now the headlines defined inside CSV file:
String value1 = model.getCellValue("Word1", 0);
String value2 = model.getCellValue("Word2", 0);
System.out.println(value1+" "+value2);

Output will be:

Hello World

Contribution guide

Contributions are welcome.

Project location

https://github.com/de-jcup/commons-csv

Git setup

git clone [email protected]:de-jcup/commons-csv.git

Wanted git setup:

git config branch.autosetuprebase always
git config branch.master.rebase true
git config push.default current
git config core.autocrlf input
git config color.ui auto
git config --add remote.origin.fetch +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*

Build

./gradlew build

commons-csv's Issues

Rename the library because too similar to apache commons-csv

Situation

The idea behind "de.jcup.commons" was based on idea of the Apache commons - with the focus on common things that don’t exist there.

Unfortunately, I only now saw that there is already a similar library from Apache under the exact same name "commons-csv" (see https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-csv/).

This was not intentional or deliberate. I will continue to use my library, but as I said, there is also a (probably good) alternative from Apache itself.

Wanted

It shall be clear that this library is not a fork for apache commons-csv but another library which is able to handle CSV data and that this library has no dependencies and is small/tiny.

Solution

• New name: TBD

• Rename the repository

• Create a new repositroy with old name, link the new repository (so old