PHP CSV-Upload UTF-8 (with and without BOM) - php

Question

Can someone perhaps explain me the difference - and how to recognize or change the format?
I've a simple HTML-Upload-Form and after uploading I parse the file contents with fgetcsv(). After parsing I've an array like this
array(2) {
[0]=>
array(9) {
["OrderId"]=>
string(13) "FG-456887"
["Product"]=>
string(7) "B9876"
}
[1]=>
array(9) {
["OrderId"]=>
string(13) "FG-852562"
["Product"]=>
string(7) "B9877"
}
}
var_dump() shows me (apparently) exactly the same dump, when using files with or without BOM, but when I make a simple loop over this array and check if the OrderId (first field in the CSV) is empty - this always fails, when the CSV is encoded without BOM. When I save the same file with BOM - everything works fine.
foreach ($data as $position) {
$orderid = $position["OrderId"];
if (empty($orderid)) die('No orderid found');
}
And it is only the first field - the other fields are ok.

Answer 1

Found it myself. Don't know, if it's elegant - but it works...
function remove_utf8_bom($text) {
$bom = pack('H*','EFBBBF');
$text = preg_replace("/^$bom/", '', $text);
return $text;
}
function csv_to_array($filename='', $delimiter=';', $seperator = '"') {
if(!file_exists($filename) || !is_readable($filename))
return FALSE;
$csvdata = file($filename);
$header = NULL;
$data = array();
foreach ($csvdata as $line) {
$row = remove_utf8_bom($line);
$row = str_getcsv($row,$delimiter,$seperator);
if(!$header)
$header = $row;
else
$data[] = array_combine($header, $row);
}
return $data;
}

Answer 2

Background:
Unbeknownst to me I was in the same situation. I only realized it when I could not use the data that I imported from csv files.
Problem:
While importing two columns from a CSV file I could not access the data in the first column in the array:
array() => ['project_nr' => '0000000', 'project_name']
I tried:
array_keys($myArray);
And it worked as expected, but not until further analysis did I see that the first column 'project_nr' was 13 characters and not 10 characters. Which I later realized was BOM being read in.
Solution:
$str = file_get_contents('yourfile.utf8.csv');
$bom = pack("CCC", 0xef, 0xbb, 0xbf);
if (0 === strncmp($str, $bom, 3)) {
echo "BOM detected - file is UTF-8\n";
$str = substr($str, 3);
}
Reference:
Here is where I found the solution
Anecdote:
I placed this solution here in hopes of connecting google searches for not being able to access specific keys in an array to BOM UTF8 CSV upload.(which is what I needed and was not able to find) I hope that perhaps it may be of help to some desperately searching soul.