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Description

fgetcsv (
resource $stream ,
? int $length = null ,
string $separator = "," ,
string $enclosure = "\"" ,
string $escape = "\\"
): array | false Similar to fgets() except that fgetcsv() parses the line it reads for fields in CSV format and returns an array containing the fields read.

Note : The locale settings are taken into account by this function. If LC_CTYPE is e.g. en_US.UTF-8 , files in one-byte encodings may be read wrongly by this function. Must be greater than the longest line (in characters) to be found in the CSV file (allowing for trailing line-end characters). Otherwise the line is split in chunks of length characters, unless the split would occur inside an enclosure. Omitting this parameter (or setting it to 0, or null in PHP 8.0.0 or later) the maximum line length is not limited, which is slightly slower. The optional escape parameter sets the escape character (at most one single-byte character). An empty string ( "" ) disables the proprietary escape mechanism.

Note : Usually an enclosure character is escaped inside a field by doubling it; however, the escape character can be used as an alternative. So for the default parameter values "" and \" have the same meaning. Other than allowing to escape the enclosure character the escape character has no special meaning; it isn't even meant to escape itself.

Return Values

Returns an indexed array containing the fields read on success, or false on failure.

Note : A blank line in a CSV file will be returned as an array comprising a single null field, and will not be treated as an error.

Note : If PHP is not properly recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, enabling the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option may help resolve the problem.

Example #1 Read and print the entire contents of a CSV file

<?php
$row = 1 ;
if (( $handle = fopen ( "test.csv" , "r" )) !== FALSE ) {
while (( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 1000 , "," )) !== FALSE ) {
$num = count ( $data );
echo "<p> $num fields in line $row : <br /></p>\n" ;
$row ++;
for ( $c = 0 ; $c < $num ; $c ++) {
echo $data [ $c ] . "<br />\n" ;
}
}
fclose ( $handle );
}
?>

str_getcsv() - Parse a CSV string into an array

explode() - Split a string by a string

file() - Reads entire file into an array

pack() - Pack data into binary string

fputcsv() - Format line as CSV and write to file pointer

james dot ellis at gmail dot com ¶

15 years ago

If you need to set auto_detect_line_endings to deal with Mac line endings, it may seem obvious but remember it should be set before fopen, not after:

This will work:
<?php
ini_set ( 'auto_detect_line_endings' , TRUE );
$handle = fopen ( '/path/to/file' , 'r' );
while ( ( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle ) ) !== FALSE ) {
//process
}
ini_set ( 'auto_detect_line_endings' , FALSE );
?>

This won't, you will still get concatenated fields at the new line position:
<?php
$handle = fopen ( '/path/to/file' , 'r' );
ini_set ( 'auto_detect_line_endings' , TRUE );
while ( ( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle ) ) !== FALSE ) {
//process
}
ini_set ( 'auto_detect_line_endings' , FALSE );
?>

shaun at slickdesign dot com dot au ¶

6 years ago

When a BOM character is suppled, `fgetscsv` may appear to wrap the first element in "double quotation marks". The simplest way to ignore it is to progress the file pointer to the 4th byte before using `fgetcsv`.

<?php
// BOM as a string for comparison.
$bom = "\xef\xbb\xbf" ;

// Read file from beginning.
$fp = fopen ( $path , 'r' );

// Progress file pointer and get first 3 characters to compare to the BOM string.
if ( fgets ( $fp , 4 ) !== $bom ) {
// BOM not found - rewind pointer to start of file.
rewind ( $fp );
}

// Read CSV into an array.
$lines = array();
while(! feof ( $fp ) && ( $line = fgetcsv ( $fp )) !== false ) {
$lines [] = $line ;
}
?>

michael dot arnauts at gmail dot com ¶

12 years ago

fgetcsv seems to handle newlines within fields fine. So in fact it is not reading a line, but keeps reading untill it finds a \n-character that's not quoted as a field.

Example:

<?php
/* test.csv contains:
"col 1","col2","col3"
"this
is
having
multiple
lines","this not","this also not"
"normal record","nothing to see here","no data"
*/

$handle = fopen ( "test.csv" , "r" );
while (( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle )) !== FALSE ) {
var_dump ( $data );
}
?>

Returns:
array(3) {
[0]=>
string(5) "col 1"
[1]=>
string(4) "col2"
[2]=>
string(4) "col3"
}
array(3) {
[0]=>
string(29) "this
is
having
multiple
lines"
[1]=>
string(8) "this not"
[2]=>
string(13) "this also not"
}
array(3) {
[0]=>
string(13) "normal record"
[1]=>
string(19) "nothing to see here"
[2]=>
string(7) "no data"
}

This means that you can expect fgetcsv to handle newlines within fields fine. This was not clear from the documentation.

Sbastien ¶

3 years ago

To use fgetcsv() with a string instead of a file, you can use the data: wrapper https://www.php.net/wrappers.data :

<?php

$csv = <<<CSV
v1.1,v1.2,v1.3
v2.1,v2.2,v2.3
CSV;

$fp = fopen ( 'data://text/plain,' . $csv , 'r' );

print_r ( fgetcsv ( $fp ));
print_r ( fgetcsv ( $fp ));

/*

Array
(
[0] => v1.1
[1] => v1.2
[2] => v1.3
)
Array
(
[0] => v2.1
[1] => v2.2
[2] => v2.3
)

*/

?>

myrddin at myrddin dot myrddin ¶

17 years ago

Here is a OOP based importer similar to the one posted earlier. However, this is slightly more flexible in that you can import huge files without running out of memory, you just have to use a limit on the get() method

Sample usage for small files:-
-------------------------------------
<?php
$importer = new CsvImporter ( "small.txt" , true );
$data = $importer -> get ();
print_r ( $data );
?>


Sample usage for large files:-
-------------------------------------
<?php
$importer = new CsvImporter ( "large.txt" , true );
while( $data = $importer -> get ( 2000 ))
{
print_r ( $data );
}
?>


And heres the class:-
-------------------------------------
<?php
class CsvImporter
{
private $fp ;
private $parse_header ;
private $header ;
private $delimiter ;
private $length ;
//--------------------------------------------------------------------
function __construct ( $file_name , $parse_header = false , $delimiter = "\t" , $length = 8000 )
{
$this -> fp = fopen ( $file_name , "r" );
$this -> parse_header = $parse_header ;
$this -> delimiter = $delimiter ;
$this -> length = $length ;
$this -> lines = $lines ;

if ( $this -> parse_header )
{
$this -> header = fgetcsv ( $this -> fp , $this -> length , $this -> delimiter );
}

}
//--------------------------------------------------------------------
function __destruct ()
{
if ( $this -> fp )
{
fclose ( $this -> fp );
}
}
//--------------------------------------------------------------------
function get ( $max_lines = 0 )
{
//if $max_lines is set to 0, then get all the data

$data = array();

if ( $max_lines > 0 )
$line_count = 0 ;
else
$line_count = - 1 ; // so loop limit is ignored

while ( $line_count < $max_lines && ( $row = fgetcsv ( $this -> fp , $this -> length , $this -> delimiter )) !== FALSE )
{
if ( $this -> parse_header )
{
foreach ( $this -> header as $i => $heading_i )
{
$row_new [ $heading_i ] = $row [ $i ];
}
$data [] = $row_new ;
}
else
{
$data [] = $row ;
}

if ( $max_lines > 0 )
$line_count ++;
}
return $data ;
}
//--------------------------------------------------------------------

}
?>

Tim Henderson ¶

16 years ago

Only problem with fgetcsv(), at least in PHP 4.x -- any stray slash in the data that happens to come before a double-quote delimiter will break it -- ie, cause the field delimiter to be escaped. I can't find a direct way to deal with it, since fgetcsv() doesn't give you a chance to manipulate the line before it reads it and parses it...I've had to change all occurrences of '\"' to '" in the file first before feeding ot to fgetcsv(). Otherwise this is perfect for that Microsoft-CSV formula, deals gracefully with all the issues.

jc at goetc dot net ¶

19 years ago

I've had alot of projects recently dealing with csv files, so I created the following class to read a csv file and return an array of arrays with the column names as keys. The only requirement is that the 1st row contain the column headings.

I only wrote it today, so I'll probably expand on it in the near future.

<?php
class CSVparse
{
var $mappings = array();

function parse_file ( $filename )
{
$id = fopen ( $filename , "r" ); //open the file
$data = fgetcsv ( $id , filesize ( $filename )); /*This will get us the */
/*main column names */

if(! $this -> mappings )
$this -> mappings = $data ;

while( $data = fgetcsv ( $id , filesize ( $filename )))
{
if( $data [ 0 ])
{
foreach( $data as $key => $value )
$converted_data [ $this -> mappings [ $key ]] = addslashes ( $value );
$table [] = $converted_data ; /* put each line into */
} /* its own entry in */
} /* the $table array */
fclose ( $id ); //close file
return $table ;
}
}
?>

michael dot martinek at gmail dot com ¶

15 years ago

Here's something I put together this morning. It allows you to read rows from your CSV and get values based on the name of the column. This works great when your header columns are not always in the same order; like when you're processing many feeds from different customers. Also makes for cleaner, easier to manage code.

So if your feed looks like this:

product_id,category_name,price,brand_name, sku_isbn_upc,image_url,landing_url,title,description
123,Test Category,12.50,No Brand,0, http://www.example.com, http://www.example.com/landing.php, Some Title,Some Description

You can do:
<?php
while ( $o -> getNext ())
{
$dPrice = $o -> getPrice ();
$nProductID = $o -> getProductID ();
$sBrandName = $o -> getBrandName ();
}
?>

If you have any questions or comments regarding this class, they can be directed to [email protected] as I probably won't be checking back here.

<?php
define ( 'C_PPCSV_HEADER_RAW' , 0 );
define ( 'C_PPCSV_HEADER_NICE' , 1 );

class PaperPear_CSVParser
{
private $m_saHeader = array();
private $m_sFileName = '' ;
private $m_fp = false ;
private $m_naHeaderMap = array();
private $m_saValues = array();

function __construct ( $sFileName )
{
//quick and dirty opening and processing.. you may wish to clean this up
if ( $this -> m_fp = fopen ( $sFileName , 'r' ))
{
$this -> processHeader ();
}
}

function __call ( $sMethodName , $saArgs )
{
//check to see if this is a set() or get() request, and extract the name
if ( preg_match ( "/[sg]et(.*)/" , $sMethodName , $saFound ))
{
//convert the name portion of the [gs]et to uppercase for header checking
$sName = strtoupper ( $saFound [ 1 ]);

//see if the entry exists in our named header-> index mapping
if ( array_key_exists ( $sName , $this -> m_naHeaderMap ))
{
//it does.. so consult the header map for which index this header controls
$nIndex = $this -> m_naHeaderMap [ $sName ];
if ( $sMethodName { 0 } == 'g' )
{
//return the value stored in the index associated with this name
return $this -> m_saValues [ $nIndex ];
}
else
{
//set the valuw
$this -> m_saValues [ $nIndex ] = $saArgs [ 0 ];
return true ;
}
}
}

//nothing we control so bail out with a false
return false ;
}

//get a nicely formatted header name. This will take product_id and make
//it PRODUCTID in the header map. So now you won't need to worry about whether you need
//to do a getProductID, or getproductid, or getProductId.. all will work.
public static function GetNiceHeaderName ( $sName )
{
return strtoupper ( preg_replace ( '/[^A-Za-z0-9]/' , '' , $sName ));
}

//process the header entry so we can map our named header fields to a numerical index, which
//we'll use when we use fgetcsv().
private function processHeader ()
{
$sLine = fgets ( $this -> m_fp );
//you'll want to make this configurable
$saFields = split ( "," , $sLine );

$nIndex = 0 ;
foreach ( $saFields as $sField )
{
//get the nice name to use for "get" and "set".
$sField = trim ( $sField );

$sNiceName = PaperPear_CSVParser :: GetNiceHeaderName ( $sField );

//track correlation of raw -> nice name so we don't have to do on-the-fly nice name checks
$this -> m_saHeader [ $nIndex ] = array( C_PPCSV_HEADER_RAW => $sField , C_PPCSV_HEADER_NICE => $sNiceName );
$this -> m_naHeaderMap [ $sNiceName ] = $nIndex ;
$nIndex ++;
}
}

//read the next CSV entry
public function getNext ()
{
//this is a basic read, you will likely want to change this to accomodate what
//you are using for CSV parameters (tabs, encapsulation, etc).
if (( $saValues = fgetcsv ( $this -> m_fp )) !== false )
{
$this -> m_saValues = $saValues ;
return true ;
}
return false ;
}
}


//quick example of usage
$o = new PaperPear_CSVParser ( 'F:\foo.csv' );
while ( $o -> getNext ())
{
echo "Price=" . $o -> getPrice () . "\r\n" ;
}

?>

tomasz at marcinkowski dot pl ¶

10 years ago

For anyone else struggling with disappearing non-latin characters in one-byte encodings - setting LANG env var (as the manual states) does not help at all. Look at LC_ALL instead.

In my case it was set to "pl_PL.utf8" but since my input file was in CP1250 most of polish characters (but not all of them!) had gone missing and city of "Łódź" had become just "dź". I've "fixed" it with "pl_PL".

kent at marketruler dot com ¶

14 years ago

Note that fgetcsv, at least in PHP 5.3 or previous, will NOT work with UTF-16 encoded files. Your options are to convert the entire file to ISO-8859-1 (or latin1), or convert line by line and convert each line into ISO-8859-1 encoding, then use str_getcsv (or compatible backwards-compatible implementation). If you need to read non-latin alphabets, probably best to convert to UTF-8.

See str_getcsv for a backwards-compatible version of it with PHP < 5.3, and see utf8_decode for a function written by Rasmus Andersson which provides utf16_decode. The modification I added was that the BOP appears at the top of the file, then not on subsequent lines. So you need to store the endian-ness, and then re-send it upon each subsequent line decoding. This modified version returns the endianness, if it's not available:

<?php
/**
* Decode UTF-16 encoded strings.
*
* Can handle both BOM'ed data and un-BOM'ed data.
* Assumes Big-Endian byte order if no BOM is available.
* From: http://php.net/manual/en/function.utf8-decode.php
*
* @param string $str UTF-16 encoded data to decode.
* @return string UTF-8 / ISO encoded data.
* @access public
* @version 0.1 / 2005-01-19
* @author Rasmus Andersson {@link http://rasmusandersson.se/}
* @package Groupies
*/
function utf16_decode ( $str , & $be = null ) {
if ( strlen ( $str ) < 2 ) {
return $str ;
}
$c0 = ord ( $str { 0 });
$c1 = ord ( $str { 1 });
$start = 0 ;
if ( $c0 == 0xFE && $c1 == 0xFF ) {
$be = true ;
$start = 2 ;
} else if ( $c0 == 0xFF && $c1 == 0xFE ) {
$start = 2 ;
$be = false ;
}
if ( $be === null ) {
$be = true ;
}
$len = strlen ( $str );
$newstr = '' ;
for ( $i = $start ; $i < $len ; $i += 2 ) {
if ( $be ) {
$val = ord ( $str { $i }) << 4 ;
$val += ord ( $str { $i + 1 });
} else {
$val = ord ( $str { $i + 1 }) << 4 ;
$val += ord ( $str { $i });
}
$newstr .= ( $val == 0x228 ) ? "\n" : chr ( $val );
}
return $newstr ;
}
?>

Trying the "setlocale" trick did not work for me, e.g.

<?php
setlocale ( LC_CTYPE , "en.UTF16" );
$line = fgetcsv ( $file , ...)
?>

But that's perhaps because my platform didn't support it. However, fgetcsv only supports single characters for the delimiter, etc. and complains if you pass in a UTF-16 version of said character, so I gave up on that rather quickly.

Hope this is helpful to someone out there.

junk at vhd dot com dot au ¶

18 years ago

The fgetcsv function seems to follow the MS excel conventions, which means:

- The quoting character is escaped by itself and not the back slash.
(i.e.Let's use the double quote (") as the quoting character:

Two double quotes "" will give a single " once parsed, if they are inside a quoted field (otherwise neither of them will be removed).

\" will give \" whether it is in a quoted field or not (same for \\) , and

if a single double quote is inside a quoted field it will be removed. If it is not inside a quoted field it will stay).

- leading and trailing spaces (\s or \t) are never removed, regardless of whether they are in quoted fields or not.

- Line breaks within fields are dealt with correctly if they are in quoted fields. (So previous comments stating the opposite are wrong, unless they are using a different PHP version.... I am using 4.4.0.)

So fgetcsv if actually very complete and can deal with every possible situation. (It does need help for macintosh line breaks though, as mentioned in the help files.)

I wish I knew all this from the start. From my own benchmarks fgetcsv strikes a very good compromise between memory consumption and speed.

-------------------------
Note: If back slashes are used to escape quotes they can easily be removed afterwards. Same for leading and trailing spaces.

code at ashleyhunt dot co dot uk ¶

13 years ago

I needed a function to analyse a file for delimiters and line endings prior to importing the file into MySQL using LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE

I wrote this function to do the job, the results are (mostly) very accurate and it works nicely with large files too.
<?php
function analyse_file ( $file , $capture_limit_in_kb = 10 ) {
// capture starting memory usage
$output [ 'peak_mem' ][ 'start' ] = memory_get_peak_usage ( true );

// log the limit how much of the file was sampled (in Kb)
$output [ 'read_kb' ] = $capture_limit_in_kb ;

// read in file
$fh = fopen ( $file , 'r' );
$contents = fread ( $fh , ( $capture_limit_in_kb * 1024 )); // in KB
fclose ( $fh );

// specify allowed field delimiters
$delimiters = array(
'comma' => ',' ,
'semicolon' => ';' ,
'tab' => "\t" ,
'pipe' => '|' ,
'colon' => ':'
);

// specify allowed line endings
$line_endings = array(
'rn' => "\r\n" ,
'n' => "\n" ,
'r' => "\r" ,
'nr' => "\n\r"
);

// loop and count each line ending instance
foreach ( $line_endings as $key => $value ) {
$line_result [ $key ] = substr_count ( $contents , $value );
}

// sort by largest array value
asort ( $line_result );

// log to output array
$output [ 'line_ending' ][ 'results' ] = $line_result ;
$output [ 'line_ending' ][ 'count' ] = end ( $line_result );
$output [ 'line_ending' ][ 'key' ] = key ( $line_result );
$output [ 'line_ending' ][ 'value' ] = $line_endings [ $output [ 'line_ending' ][ 'key' ]];
$lines = explode ( $output [ 'line_ending' ][ 'value' ], $contents );

// remove last line of array, as this maybe incomplete?
array_pop ( $lines );

// create a string from the legal lines
$complete_lines = implode ( ' ' , $lines );

// log statistics to output array
$output [ 'lines' ][ 'count' ] = count ( $lines );
$output [ 'lines' ][ 'length' ] = strlen ( $complete_lines );

// loop and count each delimiter instance
foreach ( $delimiters as $delimiter_key => $delimiter ) {
$delimiter_result [ $delimiter_key ] = substr_count ( $complete_lines , $delimiter );
}

// sort by largest array value
asort ( $delimiter_result );

// log statistics to output array with largest counts as the value
$output [ 'delimiter' ][ 'results' ] = $delimiter_result ;
$output [ 'delimiter' ][ 'count' ] = end ( $delimiter_result );
$output [ 'delimiter' ][ 'key' ] = key ( $delimiter_result );
$output [ 'delimiter' ][ 'value' ] = $delimiters [ $output [ 'delimiter' ][ 'key' ]];

// capture ending memory usage
$output [ 'peak_mem' ][ 'end' ] = memory_get_peak_usage ( true );
return $output ;
}
?>

Example Usage:
<?php
$Array = analyse_file ( '/www/files/file.csv' , 10 );

// example usable parts
// $Array['delimiter']['value'] => ,
// $Array['line_ending']['value'] => \r\n
?>

Full function output:
Array
(
[peak_mem] => Array
(
[start] => 786432
[end] => 786432
)

[line_ending] => Array
(
[results] => Array
(
[nr] => 0
[r] => 4
[n] => 4
[rn] => 4
)

[count] => 4
[key] => rn
[value] =>

)

[lines] => Array
(
[count] => 4
[length] => 94
)

[delimiter] => Array
(
[results] => Array
(
[colon] => 0
[semicolon] => 0
[pipe] => 0
[tab] => 1
[comma] => 17
)

[count] => 17
[key] => comma
[value] => ,
)

[read_kb] => 10
)

Enjoy!

Ashley

jonathangrice at yahoo dot com ¶

13 years ago

This is how to read a csv file into a multidimensional array.

<?php
# Open the File.
if (( $handle = fopen ( "file.csv" , "r" )) !== FALSE ) {
# Set the parent multidimensional array key to 0.
$nn = 0 ;
while (( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 1000 , "," )) !== FALSE ) {
# Count the total keys in the row.
$c = count ( $data );
# Populate the multidimensional array.
for ( $x = 0 ; $x < $c ; $x ++)
{
$csvarray [ $nn ][ $x ] = $data [ $x ];
}
$nn ++;
}
# Close the File.
fclose ( $handle );
}
# Print the contents of the multidimensional array.
print_r ( $csvarray );
?>

phpnet at smallfryhosting dot co dot uk ¶

20 years ago

Another version [modified michael from mediaconcepts]

<?php
function arrayFromCSV ( $file , $hasFieldNames = false , $delimiter = ',' , $enclosure = '' ) {
$result = Array();
$size = filesize ( $file ) + 1 ;
$file = fopen ( $file , 'r' );
#TO DO: There must be a better way of finding out the size of the longest row... until then
if ( $hasFieldNames ) $keys = fgetcsv ( $file , $size , $delimiter , $enclosure );
while ( $row = fgetcsv ( $file , $size , $delimiter , $enclosure )) {
$n = count ( $row ); $res =array();
for( $i = 0 ; $i < $n ; $i ++) {
$idx = ( $hasFieldNames ) ? $keys [ $i ] : $i ;
$res [ $idx ] = $row [ i ];
}
$result [] = $res ;
}
fclose ( $file );
return $result ;
}
?>

matthias dot isler at gmail dot com ¶

14 years ago

If you want to load some translations for your application, don't use csv files for that, even if it's easier to handle.

The following code snippet:

<?php
$lang = array();

$handle = fopen ( 'en.csv' , 'r' );

while( $row = fgetcsv ( $handle , 500 , ';' ))
{
$lang [ $row [ 0 ]] = $row [ 1 ];
}

fclose ( $handle );
?>

is about 400% slower than this code:

<?php
$lang = array();

$values = parse_ini_file ( 'de.ini' );

foreach( $values as $key => $val )
{
$lang [ $key ] = $val ;
}
?>

That's the reason why you should allways use .ini files for translations...

http://php.net/parse_ini_file

matasbi at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

Parse from Microsoft Excel "Unicode Text (*.txt)" format:

<?php
function parse ( $file ) {
if (( $handle = fopen ( $file , "r" )) === FALSE ) return;
while (( $cols = fgetcsv ( $handle , 1000 , "\t" )) !== FALSE ) {
foreach( $cols as $key => $val ) {
$cols [ $key ] = trim ( $cols [ $key ] );
$cols [ $key ] = iconv ( 'UCS-2' , 'UTF-8' , $cols [ $key ]. "\0" ) ;
$cols [ $key ] = str_replace ( '""' , '"' , $cols [ $key ]);
$cols [ $key ] = preg_replace ( "/^\"(.*)\"$/sim" , "$1" , $cols [ $key ]);
}
echo print_r ( $cols , 1 );
}
}
?>

daniel at softel dot jp ¶

18 years ago

Note that fgetcsv() uses the system locale setting to make assumptions about character encoding.
So if you are trying to process a UTF-8 CSV file on an EUC-JP server (for example),
you will need to do something like this before you call fgetcsv():

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'ja_JP.UTF8');

[Also not that setlocale() doesn't *permanently* affect the system locale setting]

from_php at puggan dot se ¶

7 years ago

Setting the $escape parameter dosn't return unescaped strings, but just avoid splitting on a $delimiter that have an escpae-char infront of it:

<?php
$tmp_file = "/tmp/test.csv" ;
file_put_contents ( $tmp_file , "\"first\\\";\\\"secound\"" );
echo "raw:" . PHP_EOL . file_get_contents ( $tmp_file ) . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL ;

echo "fgetcsv escaped bs:" . PHP_EOL ;
$f = fopen ( $tmp_file , 'r' );
while( $r = fgetcsv ( $f , 1024 , ';' , '"' , "\\" ))
{
print_r ( $r );
}
fclose ( $f );
echo PHP_EOL ;

echo "fgetcsv escaped #:" . PHP_EOL ;
$f = fopen ( $tmp_file , 'r' );
while( $r = fgetcsv ( $f , 1024 , ';' , '"' , "#" ))
{
print_r ( $r );
}
fclose ( $f );
echo PHP_EOL ;
?>

ifedinachukwu at yahoo dot com ¶

13 years ago

I had a csv file whose fields included data with line endings (CRLF created by hitting the carriage returns in html textarea). Of course, the LF in these fields was escaped by MySQL during the creation of the csv. Problem is I could NOT get fgetcsv to work correctly here, since each and every LF was regarded as the end of a line of the csv file, even when it was escaped!

Since what I wanted was to get THE FIRST LINE of the csv file, then count the number of fields by exploding on all unescaped commas, I had to resort to this:

<?php
/*
First five lines of csv: the 4th row has a line-break within a data field. The LFs represent line-feeds or \n
1,okonkwo joseph,nil,2010-01-12 17:41:40LF
2,okafor john,cq and sulphonamides,2010-01-12 17:58:03LF
3,okoye andrew,lives with hubby in abuja,2011-03-30 13:39:19LF
4,okeke peter,In 2001\, had appendicectomy in AbaCR
\LF
In 2004\, had ELCS at a private hoapital in Lagos,2011-03-30 13:39:19LF
5,adewale chris,cq and sulphonamides,2010-01-12 17:58:03LF

*/

$fp = fopen ( 'file.csv' , 'r' );
$i = 1 ;
$str = '' ;
$srch = '' ;
while ( false !== ( $char = fgetc ( $fp ))) {
$str .= $char ; //use this to collect the string for outputting
$srch .= $char ; //use this to search for LF, possible preceded by \'
if( strlen ( $srch ) > 2 ){
$srch = substr ( $srch , 1 ); //ie trim off the first char
}
if( $i > 1 && $srch [ 1 ] == chr ( 10 ) && $srch [ 0 ] != '\\' ){ //chr(10) is LF, ie \n
break; //if you get to the \n NOT preceded by \, that's the real line-ending, stop collecting the string;
}

$i ++;
}
echo $str ; //should contain the first line as string

?>
Perhaps there exists a more elegant solution to this issue, in which case I'd be glad to know!

jaimthorn at yahoo dot com ¶

14 years ago

I used fgetcsv to read pipe-delimited data files, and ran into the following quirk.

The data file contained data similar to this:

RECNUM|TEXT|COMMENT
1|hi!|some comment
2|"error!|another comment
3|where does this go?|yet another comment
4|the end!"|last comment

I read the file like this:

<?php
$row = fgetcsv ( $fi , $length , '|' );
?>

This causes a problem on record 2: the quote immediately after the pipe causes the file to be read up to the following quote --in this case, in record 4. Everything in between was stored in a single element of $row.

In this particular case it is easy to spot, but my script was processing thousands of records and it took me some time to figure out what went wrong.

The annoying thing is, that there doesn't seem to be an elegant fix. You can't tell PHP not to use an enclosure --for example, like this:

<?php
$row = fgetcsv ( $fi , $length , '|' , '' );
?>

(Well, you can tell PHP that, but it doesn't work.)

So you'd have to resort to a solution where you use an extremely unlikely enclosure, but since the enclosure can only be one character long, it may be hard to find.

Alternatively (and IMNSHO: more elegantly), you can choose to read these files like this, instead:

<?php
$line = fgets ( $fi , $length );
$row = explode ( '|' , $line );
?>

As it's more intuitive and resilient, I've decided to favor this 'construct' over fgetcsv from now on.

mortanon at gmail dot com ¶

18 years ago

Hier is an example for a CSV Iterator.

<?php
class CsvIterator implements Iterator
{
const ROW_SIZE = 4096 ;
/**
* The pointer to the cvs file.
* @var resource
* @access private
*/
private $filePointer = null ;
/**
* The current element, which will
* be returned on each iteration.
* @var array
* @access private
*/
private $currentElement = null ;
/**
* The row counter.
* @var int
* @access private
*/
private $rowCounter = null ;
/**
* The delimiter for the csv file.
* @var str
* @access private
*/
private $delimiter = null ;

/**
* This is the constructor.It try to open the csv file.The method throws an exception
* on failure.
*
* @access public
* @param str $file The csv file.
* @param str $delimiter The delimiter.
*
* @throws Exception
*/
public function __construct ( $file , $delimiter = ',' )
{
try {
$this -> filePointer = fopen ( $file , 'r' );
$this -> delimiter = $delimiter ;
}
catch ( Exception $e ) {
throw new Exception ( 'The file "' . $file . '" cannot be read.' );
}
}

/**
* This method resets the file pointer.
*
* @access public
*/
public function rewind () {
$this -> rowCounter = 0 ;
rewind ( $this -> filePointer );
}

/**
* This method returns the current csv row as a 2 dimensional array
*
* @access public
* @return array The current csv row as a 2 dimensional array
*/
public function current () {
$this -> currentElement = fgetcsv ( $this -> filePointer , self :: ROW_SIZE , $this -> delimiter );
$this -> rowCounter ++;
return $this -> currentElement ;
}

/**
* This method returns the current row number.
*
* @access public
* @return int The current row number
*/
public function key () {
return $this -> rowCounter ;
}

/**
* This method checks if the end of file is reached.
*
* @access public
* @return boolean Returns true on EOF reached, false otherwise.
*/
public function next () {
return ! feof ( $this -> filePointer );
}

/**
* This method checks if the next row is a valid row.
*
* @access public
* @return boolean If the next row is a valid row.
*/
public function valid () {
if (! $this -> next ()) {
fclose ( $this -> filePointer );
return false ;
}
return true ;
}
}
?>

Usage :

<?php
$csvIterator = new CsvIterator ( '/path/to/csvfile.csv' );
foreach ( $csvIterator as $row => $data ) {
// do somthing with $data
}
?>

mustafa dot kachwala at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

A simple function to return 2 Dimensional array by parsing a CSV file.

<?php
function get2DArrayFromCsv ( $file , $delimiter ) {
if (( $handle = fopen ( $file , "r" )) !== FALSE ) {
$i = 0 ;
while (( $lineArray = fgetcsv ( $handle , 4000 , $delimiter )) !== FALSE ) {
for ( $j = 0 ; $j < count ( $lineArray ); $j ++) {
$data2DArray [ $i ][ $j ] = $lineArray [ $j ];
}
$i ++;
}
fclose ( $handle );
}
return $data2DArray ;
}
?>

jack dot peterson at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

If you receive data in the following format:

Time,Dataset1,Dataset2,
timestamp1,item 1 for dataset 1,item1 for dataset2
timestamp2,item 2 for dataset 1,item2 for dataset2

the following code will output a series of arrays grouped by column with the resulting format:
array (
[column 1 title] => array (
[timestamp1] => item1 for dataset1
[timestamp2] => item2 for dataset1
)

[column 2 title] => array (
[timestamp1] => item1 for dataset2
[timestamp2] => item2 for dataset2
)
)

<?php

# Open the File.
if (( $handle = fopen ( "rawdata.csv" , "r" )) !== FALSE ) {
# Set the parent multidimensional array key to 0.
$nn = 0 ;
while (( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 0 , "," )) !== FALSE ) {
# Count the total keys in the row.
$c = count ( $data );
# Populate the multidimensional array.
for ( $x = 0 ; $x < $c ; $x ++)
{
$csvarray [ $nn ][ $x ] = $data [ $x ];
}
$nn ++;
}
# Close the File.
fclose ( $handle );
}

// take the row'ified data and columnize the array
function columnizeArray ( $csvarray ) {
$array = array();
foreach( $csvarray as $key => $value ) {
// reparse into useful array data.
if ( $key == 0 ) {
foreach ( $value AS $key2 => $value2 ) {
$array [ $key2 ] = array();
$array [ $key2 ][] = $value2 ;
}
}else if ( $key > 0 ){
foreach ( $value as $key3 => $value3 ) {
$array [ $key3 ][] = $value3 ;
}
}else{
}
}
return $array ;
}
function groupColumns ( $array = null ) {
$array2 = array();
foreach ( $array as $k => $v ) {
// procss each column
// $k = column number
// $v = array of rows
if ( $k == 0 ) {}else{ // working on column 2 or higher
$array2 [ $v [ 0 ]] = array();
foreach ( $array [ 0 ] as $k1 => $v1 ) {
if ( $v1 > 0 ) { // ignore the column heading
// store the first column variable in as the key.
// Store the value associated with this item as the value.
$array2 [ $v [ 0 ]][ $v1 ] = $v [ $k1 ];
}
}
}
}
return $array2 ;
}

$array2 = groupColumns ( columnizeArray ( $csvarray ));

print_r ( $array2 );

?>

fil dot dogaru at gmail dot com ¶

1 year ago

Shorter solution to the handling proposed by jack dot peterson at gmail dot com. Not sure if more efficient, but I guess nowadays you all have at least 1GB RAM :)). Let me know @email.

He wrote: „If you receive data in the following format:

Time,Dataset1,Dataset2,
timestamp1,item 1 for dataset 1,item1 for dataset2
timestamp2,item 2 for dataset 1,item2 for dataset2

the following code will output a series of arrays grouped by column with the resulting format:
array (
[column 1 title] => array (
[timestamp1] => item1 for dataset1
[timestamp2] => item2 for dataset1
)

[column 2 title] => array (
[timestamp1] => item1 for dataset2
[timestamp2] => item2 for dataset2
)
)”

$filename = "mybeautifulcsv.csv";
$collected = array_map('str_getcsv', file($filename));
$total = count($collected[0]);
for($i=0; $i<$total; $i++):
$formated[$collected[0][$i]] = array_column($collected, $i, 0);
endfor;
array_shift($formated);

//var_dump($formated);

kamil dot dratwa at gmail dot com ¶

2 years ago

This part of the length parameter behavior description is tricky, because it's not mentioning that separator is considered as a char and converted into an empty string: "Otherwise the line is split in chunks of length characters (...)".

First, take a look at the example of reading a line which does't contain separators:

<?php
file_put_contents ( 'data.csv' , 'foo' ); // no separator
$handle = fopen ( 'data.csv' , 'c+' );
$data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 2 );
var_dump ( $data );
?>

Example above will output:
array(1) {
[0]=>
string(2) "fo"
}

Now let's add separators:

<?php
file_put_contents ( 'data.csv' , 'f,o,o' ); // commas used as a separators
$handle = fopen ( 'data.csv' , 'c+' );
$data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 2 );
var_dump ( $data );
?>

Second example will output:

array(2) {
[0]=>
string(1) "f"
[1]=>
string(0) ""
}

Now let's alter the length:

<?php
file_put_contents ( 'data.csv' , 'f,o,o' );
$handle = fopen ( 'data.csv' , 'c+' );
$data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 3 ); // notice updated length
var_dump ( $data );
?>

Output of the last example is:

array(2) {
[0]=>
string(1) "f"
[1]=>
string(1) "o"
}

The final conclusion is that while splitting line in chunks, separator is considered as a char during the read but then it's being converted into empty string. What's more, if separator is at the very first or last position of a chunk it will be included in the result array, but if it's somewhere between other chars, then it will be just ignored.

lewiscowles at me dot com ¶

4 years ago

In-case anyone is having difficulty working around Byte-order-marks, the following should work. As usual no warranty, you should test your code... It's for UTF-8 only

<?php

//...

$fh = fopen ( 'wut.csv' , 'r' );
$firstThreeBytes = fread ( $fh , 3 );
if( $firstThreeBytes !== "\xef\xbb\xbf" ) {
rewind ( $fh );
}
while(( $row = fgetcsv ( $fh , 10000 , ',' )) !== false ) {
// Your code here
}

This basically reads 3 bytes and checks if they match

https : //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark has more information if you are dealing with other code-pages

Daniel Klein ¶

7 years ago

The $escape parameter is completely unintuitive, but it is not broken. Here is a breakdown of fgetcsv()'s behaviour. In the examples I've used underscores (_) to show spaces and brackets ([]) to show individual fields:

- Leading whitespace in each field will be stripped if it comes immediately before an enclosure: ___"foo" -> [foo]
- There can only be one enclosure per field, although it will be concatenated with any data that appears between the end enclosure and the next delimiter/new line, including any trailing whitespaces ___"foo"_"bar"__ -> [foo_"bar"__]
- If the field does not start with (leading whitespace +) an enclosure, the whole field is interpreted as raw data, even if enclosure characters appear elsewhere within the field: _foo"bar"_ -> [_foo"bar"_]
- Delimiters cannot be escaped outside enclosures, they have to be enclosed instead. Delimiters don't need to be escaped inside enclosures: "foo,bar","baz,qux" -> [foo,bar][baz,qux]; foo\,bar -> [foo\][bar]; "foo\,bar" -> [foo\,bar]
- Double enclosures inside single enclosures are converted to single enclosures: "foobar" -> [foobar]; "foo""bar" -> [foo"bar]; """foo""" -> ["foo"]; ""foo"" -> [foo""] (empty enclosure followed by raw data)
- The $escape parameter works as expected, but unlike enclosures DOES NOT get unescaped. It is necessary to unescape the data elsewhere in the code: "\"foo\"" -> [\"foo\"]; "foo\"bar" -> [foo\"bar]

Note: the following data (which is a very common problem) is invalid: "\". Its structure is equivalent to "@ or in other words, an open enclosure, some data and no closing enclosure.

The following functions can be used to get the expected behaviour:

<?php
// Removes escape characters before both enclosures and escapes, but leaves everything else untouched, similiar to single quoting
function fgetcsv_unescape_enclosures_and_escapes ( $fh , $length = 0 , $delimiter = ',' , $enclosure = '"' , $escape = '\\' ) {
$fields = fgetcsv ( $fh , $length , $delimiter , $enclosure , $escape );
if ( $fields ) {
$regex_enclosure = preg_quote ( $enclosure );
$regex_escape = preg_quote ( $escape );
$fields = preg_replace ( "/ { $regex_escape } ( { $regex_enclosure } | { $regex_escape } )/" , '$1' , $fields );
}
return $fields ;
}

// Does NOT remove a lone escape character at the end of a field
function fgetcsv_unescape_all ( $fh , $length = 0 , $delimiter = ',' , $enclosure = '"' , $escape = '\\' ) {
$fields = fgetcsv ( $fh , $length , $delimiter , $enclosure , $escape );
if ( $fields ) {
$regex_escape = preg_quote ( $escape );
$fields = preg_replace ( "/ { $regex_escape } (.)/s" , '$1' , $fields );
}
return $fields ;
}

// Removes lone escape characters at the end of fields
function fgetcsv_unescape_all_strip_last ( $fh , $length = 0 , $delimiter = ',' , $enclosure = '"' , $escape = '\\' ) {
$fields = fgetcsv ( $fh , $length , $delimiter , $enclosure , $escape );
if ( $fields ) {
$regex_escape = preg_quote ( $escape );
$fields = preg_replace ( "/ { $regex_escape } (.?)/s" , '$1' , $fields );
}
return $fields ;
}
?>

Caution: ideally, there shouldn't be any unescaped escape characters outside enclosures; the field should be enclosed and escaped instead. If there are any, they could end up being removed as well, depending on the function used.

vladimir at luchaninov dot com ¶

8 years ago

Here is an example how to use this function with generators
https://github.com/luchaninov/csv-file-loader (composer require "luchaninov/csv-file-loader:1.*")

$loader = new CsvFileLoader();
$loader->setFilename('/path/to/your_data.csv');

foreach ($loader->getItems() as $item) {
var_dump($item); // do something here
}

If you have CSV-file like

id,name,surname
1,Jack,Black
2,John,Doe

you'll get 2 items

['id' => '1', 'name' => 'Jack', 'surname' => 'Black']
['id' => '2', 'name' => 'John', 'surname' => 'Doe']

Xander ¶

13 years ago

I had a problem with multibytes. File was windows-1250, script was UTF-8 and set_locale wasn't work so I made a simple and safe workaround:

<?php
$fc = iconv ( 'windows-1250' , 'utf-8' , file_get_contents ( $_FILES [ 'csv' ][ 'tmp_name' ]));

file_put_contents ( 'tmp/import.tmp' , $fc );
$handle = fopen ( 'tmp/import.tmp' , "r" );
$rows = array();
while (( $data = fgetcsv ( $handle , 0 , ";" )) !== FALSE ) {

$rows [] = $data ;

}
fclose ( $handle );
unlink ( 'tmp/import.tmp' );
?>

I hope You will find it out usefull.
Sorry for my english.

Anonymous ¶

18 years ago

beware of characters of binary value == 0, as they seem to make fgetcsv ignore the remaining part of a line where they appear.

Maybe this is normal under some convention I don't know, but a file exported from Excel had those as values for some cells *sometimes*, thus fgetcsv return variable cell counts for different lines.

i'm using php 4.3

kurtnorgaz at web dot de ¶

20 years ago

You should pay attention to the fact that "fgetcsv" does remove leading TAB-chars "chr(9)" while reading the file.

This means if you have a chr(9) as the first char in the file and you use fgetcsv this char is automaticaly deleted.

Example:
file content:
chr(9)first#second#third#fourth

source:
<?php $line = fgetcsv ( $handle , 500 , "#" ); ?>

The array $line looks like:
$line[0] = first
$line[1] = second
$line[2] = third
$line[3] = fourth

and not
$line[0] = chr(9)first
$line[1] = second
$line[2] = third
$line[3] = fourth

All chr(9) after another char is not deleted!

Example:
file content:
Achr(9)first#second#third#fourth

source:
<?php $line = fgetcsv ( $handle , 500 , "#" ); ?>

The array $line looks like:
$line[0] = Achr(9)first
$line[1] = second
$line[2] = third
$line[3] = fourth

tokai at binaryriot dot com ¶

18 years ago

Newer PHP versions handle cvs files slightly different than older versions.

"Max Mustermann"|"Muster Road 34b"|"Berlin" |"Germany"
"Sophie Master" |"Riverstreet" |"Washington"|"USA"

The extra spaces behind a few fields in the example (which are useful, when you manually manage a small csv database to align the columns) were ignored by fgetcsv from PHP 4.3. With the new 4.4.1 release they get appended to the string, so you end up with "Riverstreet " instead the expected "Riverstreet".

Easy workaround is to just trim all fields after reading them in.

<?php
while ( $data = fgetcsv ( $database , 32768 , "|" ) )
{
$i = 0 ;

while(isset( $data [ $i ]))
{
$data [ $i ] = rtrim ( $data [ $i ]);
$i ++;
}

// ....
}
?>

do not spam aleske at live dot ru ¶

13 years ago

The PHP's CSV handling stuff is non-standard and contradicts with RFC4180, thus fgetcsv() cannot properly deal with files like this example from Wikipedia:

1997,Ford,E350,"ac, abs, moon",3000.00
1999,Chevy,"Venture ""Extended Edition""","",4900.00
1999,Chevy,"Venture ""Extended Edition, Very Large""","",5000.00
1996,Jeep,Grand Cherokee,"MUST SELL!
air, moon roof, loaded",4799.00

Please note: the enclosure symbol is doubled inside fields, field data can contain linebreaks, and there is no real escape symbol. Also, fputcsv() creates non-standard CSV files.

There is a quick and dirty RFC-compliant realization of CSV creation and parsing:

<?php
function array_to_csvstring ( $items , $CSV_SEPARATOR = ';' , $CSV_ENCLOSURE = '"' , $CSV_LINEBREAK = "\n" ) {
$string = '' ;
$o = array();

foreach ( $items as $item ) {
if ( stripos ( $item , $CSV_ENCLOSURE ) !== false ) {
$item = str_replace ( $CSV_ENCLOSURE , $CSV_ENCLOSURE . $CSV_ENCLOSURE , $item );
}

if (( stripos ( $item , $CSV_SEPARATOR ) !== false )
|| ( stripos ( $item , $CSV_ENCLOSURE ) !== false )
|| ( stripos ( $item , $CSV_LINEBREAK !== false ))) {
$item = $CSV_ENCLOSURE . $item . $CSV_ENCLOSURE ;
}

$o [] = $item ;
}

$string = implode ( $CSV_SEPARATOR , $o ) . $CSV_LINEBREAK ;

return $string ;
}

function csvstring_to_array (& $string , $CSV_SEPARATOR = ';' , $CSV_ENCLOSURE = '"' , $CSV_LINEBREAK = "\n" ) {
$o = array();

$cnt = strlen ( $string );
$esc = false ;
$escesc = false ;
$num = 0 ;
$i = 0 ;
while ( $i < $cnt ) {
$s = $string [ $i ];

if ( $s == $CSV_LINEBREAK ) {
if ( $esc ) {
$o [ $num ] .= $s ;
} else {
$i ++;
break;
}
} elseif ( $s == $CSV_SEPARATOR ) {
if ( $esc ) {
$o [ $num ] .= $s ;
} else {
$num ++;
$esc = false ;
$escesc = false ;
}
} elseif ( $s == $CSV_ENCLOSURE ) {
if ( $escesc ) {
$o [ $num ] .= $CSV_ENCLOSURE ;
$escesc = false ;
}

if ( $esc ) {
$esc = false ;
$escesc = true ;
} else {
$esc = true ;
$escesc = false ;
}
} else {
if ( $escesc ) {
$o [ $num ] .= $CSV_ENCLOSURE ;
$escesc = false ;
}

$o [ $num ] .= $s ;
}

$i ++;
}

// $string = substr($string, $i);

return $o ;
}
?>

References:
RFC4180 - http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#Example

Also, there is complete solution of CSV handling at http://code.google.com/p/parsecsv-for-php/

＋ add a note