Javascript code to parse CSV data

Question

Hi there, Does someone have an idea on where I could find some javascript code to parse CSV data ?

Answer 1

You can use the CSVToArray() function mentioned in this blog entry.

<script type="text/javascript">

    // This will parse a delimited string into an array of
    // arrays. The default delimiter is the comma, but this
    // can be overriden in the second argument.
    function CSVToArray( strData, strDelimiter ){
     // Check to see if the delimiter is defined. If not,
     // then default to comma.
     strDelimiter = (strDelimiter || ",");

     // Create a regular expression to parse the CSV values.
     var objPattern = new RegExp(
      (
       // Delimiters.
       "(\\" + strDelimiter + "|\\r?\\n|\\r|^)" +

       // Quoted fields.
       "(?:\"([^\"]*(?:\"\"[^\"]*)*)\"|" +

       // Standard fields.
       "([^\"\\" + strDelimiter + "\\r\\n]*))"
      ),
      "gi"
      );


     // Create an array to hold our data. Give the array
     // a default empty first row.
     var arrData = [[]];

     // Create an array to hold our individual pattern
     // matching groups.
     var arrMatches = null;


     // Keep looping over the regular expression matches
     // until we can no longer find a match.
     while (arrMatches = objPattern.exec( strData )){

      // Get the delimiter that was found.
      var strMatchedDelimiter = arrMatches[ 1 ];

      // Check to see if the given delimiter has a length
      // (is not the start of string) and if it matches
      // field delimiter. If id does not, then we know
      // that this delimiter is a row delimiter.
      if (
       strMatchedDelimiter.length &&
       (strMatchedDelimiter != strDelimiter)
       ){

       // Since we have reached a new row of data,
       // add an empty row to our data array.
       arrData.push( [] );

      }


      // Now that we have our delimiter out of the way,
      // let's check to see which kind of value we
      // captured (quoted or unquoted).
      if (arrMatches[ 2 ]){

       // We found a quoted value. When we capture
       // this value, unescape any double quotes.
       var strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 2 ].replace(
        new RegExp( "\"\"", "g" ),
        "\""
        );

      } else {

       // We found a non-quoted value.
       var strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 3 ];

      }


      // Now that we have our value string, let's add
      // it to the data array.
      arrData[ arrData.length - 1 ].push( strMatchedValue );
     }

     // Return the parsed data.
     return( arrData );
    }

</script>