Dealing with commas in CSV - php

Question

I get a CSV data from a SOAP call in php. Unfortunately, the data may have commas in it. It is formatted correctly as in
1,name,2,lariat,3,"first, last",5,NMEA,...
I need to parse it to individual values in either php or javascript. I have browsed through threads on stack overflow and elsewhere but have not found a specific solution in php / javascript.
The approach I am currently using is
$subject = '123,name,456,lryyrt,123213,"first,last",8585,namea3';
$pattern = '/,|,"/';
$t2=preg_replace ('/,|(".*")/','$0*',$subject);
$t2=str_replace(',','*',$t2);
$t2=str_replace('*',',',$t2);
Where * is the deliminator, but the preg_replace generates an extra *. I have tried a couple of other approaches involving preg_match and other preg_ functions but did not succeed in having any kind of a clean split.
Any suggestion on how to split up CSV data that contains commas in it?

Answer 1

Don't attempt to do this with a regular expression. Just use str_getcsv()! The third parameter informs str_getcsv() to look for quote-enclosed fields.
$subject = '123,name,456,lryyrt,123213,"first,last",8585,namea3';
$array = str_getcsv($subject, ",", '"');
print_r($array);
// Prints:
Array
(
[0] => 123
[1] => name
[2] => 456
[3] => lryyrt
[4] => 123213
[5] => first,last
[6] => 8585
[7] => namea3
)

Answer 2

Just another way to convert a csv file to an associative array.
<?php
//
// Convert csv file to associative array:
//
function csv_to_array($input, $delimiter=',')
{
$header = null;
$data = array();
$csvData = str_getcsv($input, "\n");
foreach($csvData as $csvLine){
if(is_null($header)) $header = explode($delimiter, $csvLine);
else{
$items = explode($delimiter, $csvLine);
for($n = 0, $m = count($header); $n < $m; $n++){
$prepareData[$header[$n]] = $items[$n];
}
$data[] = $prepareData;
}
}
return $data;
}
//-----------------------------------
//
//Usage:
$csvArr = csv_to_array(file_get_contents('test.csv'));
?>

Answer 3

For JavaScript use jQuery-CSV
If you're already using jQuery, just add the jquery-csv.js module to expose the extension methods. Then just convert the CSV directly to a JavaScript array.
If you're only parsing the following will convert it to a one-dimensional array:
$.csv.toArray(csv);
If you have a multi-line CSV string the following will convert it to a two-dimensional array:
$.csv.toArrays(csv);
Note: all the different line endings are detected and split correctly using a smart regex.
The default delimiter is a double-quote (") and the default separator is a comma (,) but you can change use custom settings by specifying them in the method call.
Ex:
$.csv.toArray(csv, {
separator:';',
delimiter:"'"
});
I created the project to provide an end-to-end CSV parser written in JavaScript that takes the guesswork out of importing-exporting CSV.
Doing the heavy lifting on the client removes unnecessary load on the server and removes any unnecessary AJAX round-trips to the server.
Update:
If you're looking for a server-side solution, the library also works on Node.js.