Can you recommend a Java library for reading (and possibly writing) CSV files?

Question

Can you recommend a Java library for reading, parsing, validating and mapping rows in a comma separated value (CSV) file to Java value objects (JavaBeans)?

Answer 1

We have used http://opencsv.sourceforge.net/ with good success

I also came across another question with good links: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/123/csv-file-to-xml

Answer 2

I've had good success both parsing and writing CSV files from Java with OpenCVS. If you want to read or write Excel compatible spreadsheet with Java, the POI library from Apache is the way to go.

Answer 3

The CSV File to XML question asked previously seems to answer all my questions.

OpenCSV (http://opencsv.sourceforge.net/) also does binding to JavaBeans using a Column Position Mapping Strategy

  ColumnPositionMappingStrategy strat = new ColumnPositionMappingStrategy();
  strat.setType(YourOrderBean.class);
  String[] columns = new String[] {"name", "orderNumber", "id"}; // the fields to bind do in your JavaBean
  strat.setColumnMapping(columns);

  CsvToBean csv = new CsvToBean();
  List list = csv.parse(strat, yourReader);

JSEFA (http://jsefa.sourceforge.net) also seems to do everything I need - particularly binding to Java objects - in addition to supporting FLR and XML

Answer 4

I find Flatpack to be really good with handling quirky CSV files (escapes, quotes, bad records, etc.)

Answer 5

Hey, I have an open-source project for that: JFileHelpers. I think the main advantage is that it uses Java Annotations, take a look:

If you have this bean:

@FixedLengthRecord()
public class Customer {
    @FieldFixedLength(4)
    public Integer custId;

    @FieldAlign(alignMode=AlignMode.Right)
    @FieldFixedLength(20)
    public String name;

    @FieldFixedLength(3)
    public Integer rating;

    @FieldTrim(trimMode=TrimMode.Right)
    @FieldFixedLength(10)
    @FieldConverter(converter = ConverterKind.Date, 
    format = "dd-MM-yyyy")
    public Date addedDate;

    @FieldFixedLength(3)
    @FieldOptional
    public String stockSimbol;    
}

And wants to parse this file:

....|....1....|....2....|....3....|....4       
1   Antonio Pereira     10012-12-1978ABC
2   Felipe Coury          201-01-2007
3   Anderson Polga       4212-11-2007DEF

All you have to do is this:

FileHelperEngine<Customer> engine = 
    new FileHelperEngine<Customer>(Customer.class); 
List<Customer> customers = 
    new ArrayList<Customer>();

customers = engine.readResource(
    "/samples/customers-fixed.txt");

Also, it supports master-detail, date and format conversion, and a lot more. Let me know what you think!

Best regards!

Answer 6

Check out Apache Poi.

Also check out CSVBeans.

Answer 7

I can recommend SuperCSV. Simple to use, and did everything I needed.