Home » File Formats » File_CSV » Bug #3935

[2005-03-23 23:29 UTC] crain at fuse dot net

Description:
------------
Hi,

I would like to see an optional third parameter to File_CSV::read() to instruct the method whether or not to ignore lines with more or fewer fields than calculated by File_CSV::discoverFormat(), e.g. function read($file, &$conf, $ignoreSize = false).

Currently, the test at the end of the method results in valid csv data not being returned to the calling script, even though a valid csv file may have lines having varying numbers of elements. If the exploded pieces of a line <> $conf['fields'] (which, being based only on the first five lines of a file, should be only a guideline in any case) the parsed line is not returned.

The current behavior breaks PEAR::Contact_AddressBook::importFromFile(), which relies on File_CSV::read() for parsing csv exports from contact managers, which very typically export files of varying numbers of fields. I think it should be up to the calling script to determine how to respond to a mismatch in size.

Thanks!
Andy Crain

[2005-03-23 23:50 UTC] crain at fuse dot net

Oops. I should have said $conf['fields'] is based on first 10 lines of file, not five.

[2005-03-24 18:07 UTC] crain at fuse dot net

Sorry about that. I knew I was forgetting something:

Id: File.php,v 1.6 2005/02/27 10:00:26
Id: CSV.php,v 1.3 2005/02/27 10:00:27

[2005-03-24 20:57 UTC] crain at fuse dot net

Apologies again: the version numbers I gave previously were from my own repository; in fact, I'm running the most current version of the files:
Id: File.php,v 1.28 2005/01/10 13:25:57 mike Exp
Id: CSV.php,v 1.18 2005/02/18 11:16:14 dufuz Exp
Andy

[2005-12-15 14:01 UTC] contact at andreass dot net

I would recommend the following approach (I personally need the option to fix the length of fields with empty ones, as Exel produces a different number of empty fields if there are some at the end.):

read($file, &$conf, $sizeMismatch='error')

if (count($fields) != $conf['fields']) {
if( $sizeMismatch == 'fix' ) {
return array_merge( $fields, array_fill( count($fields), $conf['fields']-count($fields), '' ) );
} elseif( $sizeMismatch == 'ignore' ) {
return $fields;
} else {
File_CSV::raiseError("Read wrong fields number count: '". count($fields) .
"' expected ".$conf['fields']);
return true;
}
}

[2006-03-18 19:27 UTC] contact at andreass dot net

What about incorporating my suggestion into the Package?