Auto skip heading rows in csv File php - php

Question

I am working with an problem that csv file may contain heading so, how can we skip that heading or extra information and skip to main data(csv data)
CSV Data may like :
**Heading 1**
This is some extra text before Data
date: xx-xx-xxxx
country data: A,B,C
*Then here starts the Data(comma separated values)*
Col1,col2,col3,
dataCol1,datacol2,datacol3 ....
so how can we skip to main data and process that data
any help will be appreciated.. as i tried but cant fix it
Thanks

Answer 1

This is by no means a perfect solution, because there are some unknowns in your question - therefore I have to make an of assumption: there will be more rows of csv column data than metadata/header lines. In order to assist in this heuristic, we will also exclude all "empty" lines.
If we can make this assumption then we can do something like the following:
<?php
// define filepath... optionally validate
// with `is_file()` and `is_writable()`
$file = __DIR__ . '/data.csv';
// create an SplFileObject
$csv = new SplFileObject($file);
// set some flags to read file transparently
// as a csv. drop `SKIP_EMPTY` will ignore all
// blank lines as specified above
$csv->setFlags(
SplFileObject::DROP_NEW_LINE |
SplFileObject::READ_AHEAD |
SplFileObject::SKIP_EMPTY |
SplFileObject::READ_CSV
);
// init an empty array to store rows
$rows = [];
// an `SplFileObject` allows iteration
// over its contents with `foreach`.
foreach ($csv as $row) {
// stash each row into a sub-array
// indexed by its length (number of columns)
$rows[count($row)][] = $row;
}
// `max()` will return the biggest sub-array
// which will be the column data according
// to our assumptions stated above
$csvData = max($rows);
var_dump($csvData);
If the contents of $file contained:
**Heading 1**
This is some extra text before Data
date: xx-xx-xxxx
country data: A,B,C
*Then here starts the Data(comma separated values)*
Col1,col2,col3
dataCol1,datacol2,datacol3
dataCol1,datacol2,datacol3
dataCol1,datacol2,datacol3
We should expect the following result:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => country data: A
[1] => B
[2] => C
)
[1] => Array
(
[0] => Col1
[1] => col2
[2] => col3
)
[2] => Array
(
[0] => dataCol1
[1] => datacol2
[2] => datacol3
)
[3] => Array
(
[0] => dataCol1
[1] => datacol2
[2] => datacol3
)
[4] => Array
(
[0] => dataCol1
[1] => datacol2
[2] => datacol3
)
)
Which looks pretty good - except... the line country data: A,B,C has been parsed as a valid row, because it also includes two commas. That's the problem with trying to program heuristically. I don't know if this will be a problem in your specific use case. If so, some refinement of the above approach might be required.
References:
SplFileObject()
SplFileObject::setFlags()
max()
Hope this helps :)

Answer 2

You need to find some kind of delimiter or pattern you can use to indicate where the data starts. For example:
Do you know if the header will always be a certain number of lines?
Will it always have a blank line after it like in your example?
etc.
Once you know that, you can test to see if the file contains that pattern/delimiter, and then skip to the csv part.
thanks, but it is uncertain, heading section may be or not present... – Abzkn
That's the trick - you need to find out what conditions would be there if it was present. Then test for those conditions. For example, if you know the header is always 4 lines and the next one is a blank line, you could do something like this:
<?php
$f = file_get_contents($filename); //get everything in the file being processed
$file_lines = explode("\n", $f); //break up each line into an array we can process
$start_line = 0; //assume the header is not present and we'll start processing from line 1
if($file_lines[4] == ''){
//header is present, so start processing from line 5
$start_line = 5;
}
for($l = $start_line;$l < count($file_lines;$l++){
//process each line
}
?>