Module Contents

The :mod:`csv` module defines the following functions:

.. function:: reader(csvfile, dialect='excel', **fmtparams)

   Return a reader object which will iterate over lines in the given *csvfile*.
   *csvfile* can be any object which supports the :term:`iterator` protocol and returns a
   string each time its :meth:`!next` method is called --- file objects and list
   objects are both suitable.   If *csvfile* is a file object, it must be opened
   with the 'b' flag on platforms where that makes a difference.  An optional
   *dialect* parameter can be given which is used to define a set of parameters
   specific to a particular CSV dialect.  It may be an instance of a subclass of
   the :class:`Dialect` class or one of the strings returned by the
   :func:`list_dialects` function.  The other optional *fmtparams* keyword arguments
   can be given to override individual formatting parameters in the current
   dialect.  For full details about the dialect and formatting parameters, see
   section :ref:`csv-fmt-params`.

   Each row read from the csv file is returned as a list of strings.  No
   automatic data type conversion is performed.

   A short usage example::

      >>> import csv
      >>> with open('eggs.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
      ...     spamreader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=' ', quotechar='|')
      ...     for row in spamreader:
      ...         print ', '.join(row)
      Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans
      Spam, Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam

   .. versionchanged:: 2.5
      The parser is now stricter with respect to multi-line quoted fields. Previously,
      if a line ended within a quoted field without a terminating newline character, a
      newline would be inserted into the returned field. This behavior caused problems
      when reading files which contained carriage return characters within fields.
      The behavior was changed to return the field without inserting newlines. As a
      consequence, if newlines embedded within fields are important, the input should
      be split into lines in a manner which preserves the newline characters.

.. function:: writer(csvfile, dialect='excel', **fmtparams)

   Return a writer object responsible for converting the user's data into delimited
   strings on the given file-like object.  *csvfile* can be any object with a
   :func:`write` method.  If *csvfile* is a file object, it must be opened with the
   'b' flag on platforms where that makes a difference.  An optional *dialect*
   parameter can be given which is used to define a set of parameters specific to a
   particular CSV dialect.  It may be an instance of a subclass of the
   :class:`Dialect` class or one of the strings returned by the
   :func:`list_dialects` function.  The other optional *fmtparams* keyword arguments
   can be given to override individual formatting parameters in the current
   dialect.  For full details about the dialect and formatting parameters, see
   section :ref:`csv-fmt-params`. To make it
   as easy as possible to interface with modules which implement the DB API, the
   value :const:`None` is written as the empty string.  While this isn't a
   reversible transformation, it makes it easier to dump SQL NULL data values to
   CSV files without preprocessing the data returned from a ``cursor.fetch*`` call.
   All other non-string data are stringified with :func:`str` before being written.

   A short usage example::

      import csv
      with open('eggs.csv', 'wb') as csvfile:
          spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=' ',
                                  quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
          spamwriter.writerow(['Spam'] * 5 + ['Baked Beans'])
          spamwriter.writerow(['Spam', 'Lovely Spam', 'Wonderful Spam'])

.. function:: register_dialect(name[, dialect], **fmtparams)

   Associate *dialect* with *name*.  *name* must be a string or Unicode object. The
   dialect can be specified either by passing a sub-class of :class:`Dialect`, or
   by *fmtparams* keyword arguments, or both, with keyword arguments overriding
   parameters of the dialect. For full details about the dialect and formatting
   parameters, see section :ref:`csv-fmt-params`.

.. function:: unregister_dialect(name)

   Delete the dialect associated with *name* from the dialect registry.  An
   :exc:`Error` is raised if *name* is not a registered dialect name.

.. function:: get_dialect(name)

   Return the dialect associated with *name*.  An :exc:`Error` is raised if *name*
   is not a registered dialect name.

   .. versionchanged:: 2.5
      This function now returns an immutable :class:`Dialect`.  Previously an
      instance of the requested dialect was returned.  Users could modify the
      underlying class, changing the behavior of active readers and writers.

.. function:: list_dialects()

   Return the names of all registered dialects.

.. function:: field_size_limit([new_limit])

   Returns the current maximum field size allowed by the parser. If *new_limit* is
   given, this becomes the new limit.

   .. versionadded:: 2.5

The :mod:`csv` module defines the following classes:

Create an object which operates like a regular reader but maps the information read into a dict whose keys are given by the optional fieldnames parameter. If the fieldnames parameter is omitted, the values in the first row of the csvfile will be used as the fieldnames. If the row read has more fields than the fieldnames sequence, the remaining data is added as a sequence keyed by the value of restkey. If the row read has fewer fields than the fieldnames sequence, the remaining keys take the value of the optional restval parameter. Any other optional or keyword arguments are passed to the underlying :class:`reader` instance.

Create an object which operates like a regular writer but maps dictionaries onto output rows. The fieldnames parameter identifies the order in which values in the dictionary passed to the :meth:`writerow` method are written to the csvfile. The optional restval parameter specifies the value to be written if the dictionary is missing a key in fieldnames. If the dictionary passed to the :meth:`writerow` method contains a key not found in fieldnames, the optional extrasaction parameter indicates what action to take. If it is set to 'raise' a :exc:`ValueError` is raised. If it is set to 'ignore', extra values in the dictionary are ignored. Any other optional or keyword arguments are passed to the underlying :class:`writer` instance.

Note that unlike the :class:`DictReader` class, the fieldnames parameter of the :class:`DictWriter` is not optional. Since Python's :class:`dict` objects are not ordered, there is not enough information available to deduce the order in which the row should be written to the csvfile.

The :class:`Dialect` class is a container class relied on primarily for its attributes, which are used to define the parameters for a specific :class:`reader` or :class:`writer` instance.

The :class:`excel` class defines the usual properties of an Excel-generated CSV file. It is registered with the dialect name 'excel'.

The :class:`excel_tab` class defines the usual properties of an Excel-generated TAB-delimited file. It is registered with the dialect name 'excel-tab'.

The :class:`Sniffer` class is used to deduce the format of a CSV file.

The :class:`Sniffer` class provides two methods:

.. method:: sniff(sample, delimiters=None)

   Analyze the given *sample* and return a :class:`Dialect` subclass
   reflecting the parameters found.  If the optional *delimiters* parameter
   is given, it is interpreted as a string containing possible valid
   delimiter characters.

.. method:: has_header(sample)

   Analyze the sample text (presumed to be in CSV format) and return
   :const:`True` if the first row appears to be a series of column headers.

An example for :class:`Sniffer` use:

with open('example.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
    dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(1024))
    csvfile.seek(0)
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect)
    # ... process CSV file contents here ...

The :mod:`csv` module defines the following constants:

.. data:: QUOTE_ALL

   Instructs :class:`writer` objects to quote all fields.

.. data:: QUOTE_MINIMAL

   Instructs :class:`writer` objects to only quote those fields which contain
   special characters such as *delimiter*, *quotechar* or any of the characters in
   *lineterminator*.

.. data:: QUOTE_NONNUMERIC

   Instructs :class:`writer` objects to quote all non-numeric fields.

   Instructs the reader to convert all non-quoted fields to type *float*.

.. data:: QUOTE_NONE

   Instructs :class:`writer` objects to never quote fields.  When the current
   *delimiter* occurs in output data it is preceded by the current *escapechar*
   character.  If *escapechar* is not set, the writer will raise :exc:`Error` if
   any characters that require escaping are encountered.

   Instructs :class:`reader` to perform no special processing of quote characters.

The :mod:`csv` module defines the following exception:

.. exception:: Error

   Raised by any of the functions when an error is detected.

Dialects and Formatting Parameters

To make it easier to specify the format of input and output records, specific formatting parameters are grouped together into dialects. A dialect is a subclass of the :class:`Dialect` class having a set of specific methods and a single :meth:`validate` method. When creating :class:`reader` or :class:`writer` objects, the programmer can specify a string or a subclass of the :class:`Dialect` class as the dialect parameter. In addition to, or instead of, the dialect parameter, the programmer can also specify individual formatting parameters, which have the same names as the attributes defined below for the :class:`Dialect` class.

Dialects support the following attributes:

.. attribute:: Dialect.delimiter

   A one-character string used to separate fields.  It defaults to ``','``.

.. attribute:: Dialect.doublequote

   Controls how instances of *quotechar* appearing inside a field should be
   themselves be quoted.  When :const:`True`, the character is doubled. When
   :const:`False`, the *escapechar* is used as a prefix to the *quotechar*.  It
   defaults to :const:`True`.

   On output, if *doublequote* is :const:`False` and no *escapechar* is set,
   :exc:`Error` is raised if a *quotechar* is found in a field.

.. attribute:: Dialect.escapechar

   A one-character string used by the writer to escape the *delimiter* if *quoting*
   is set to :const:`QUOTE_NONE` and the *quotechar* if *doublequote* is
   :const:`False`. On reading, the *escapechar* removes any special meaning from
   the following character. It defaults to :const:`None`, which disables escaping.

.. attribute:: Dialect.lineterminator

   The string used to terminate lines produced by the :class:`writer`. It defaults
   to ``'\r\n'``.

   .. note::

      The :class:`reader` is hard-coded to recognise either ``'\r'`` or ``'\n'`` as
      end-of-line, and ignores *lineterminator*. This behavior may change in the
      future.

.. attribute:: Dialect.quotechar

   A one-character string used to quote fields containing special characters, such
   as the *delimiter* or *quotechar*, or which contain new-line characters.  It
   defaults to ``'"'``.

.. attribute:: Dialect.quoting

   Controls when quotes should be generated by the writer and recognised by the
   reader.  It can take on any of the :const:`QUOTE_\*` constants (see section
   :ref:`csv-contents`) and defaults to :const:`QUOTE_MINIMAL`.

.. attribute:: Dialect.skipinitialspace

   When :const:`True`, whitespace immediately following the *delimiter* is ignored.
   The default is :const:`False`.

.. attribute:: Dialect.strict

   When ``True``, raise exception :exc:`Error` on bad CSV input.
   The default is ``False``.

Reader Objects

Reader objects (:class:`DictReader` instances and objects returned by the :func:`reader` function) have the following public methods:

.. method:: csvreader.next()

   Return the next row of the reader's iterable object as a list, parsed according
   to the current dialect.

Reader objects have the following public attributes:

.. attribute:: csvreader.dialect

   A read-only description of the dialect in use by the parser.

.. attribute:: csvreader.line_num

   The number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not the same as the
   number of records returned, as records can span multiple lines.

   .. versionadded:: 2.5

DictReader objects have the following public attribute:

.. attribute:: csvreader.fieldnames

   If not passed as a parameter when creating the object, this attribute is
   initialized upon first access or when the first record is read from the
   file.

   .. versionchanged:: 2.6

Writer Objects

:class:`Writer` objects (:class:`DictWriter` instances and objects returned by the :func:`writer` function) have the following public methods. A row must be a sequence of strings or numbers for :class:`Writer` objects and a dictionary mapping fieldnames to strings or numbers (by passing them through :func:`str` first) for :class:`DictWriter` objects. Note that complex numbers are written out surrounded by parens. This may cause some problems for other programs which read CSV files (assuming they support complex numbers at all).

.. method:: csvwriter.writerow(row)

   Write the *row* parameter to the writer's file object, formatted according to
   the current dialect.

.. method:: csvwriter.writerows(rows)

   Write all the *rows* parameters (a list of *row* objects as described above) to
   the writer's file object, formatted according to the current dialect.

Writer objects have the following public attribute:

.. attribute:: csvwriter.dialect

   A read-only description of the dialect in use by the writer.

DictWriter objects have the following public method:

.. method:: DictWriter.writeheader()

   Write a row with the field names (as specified in the constructor).

   .. versionadded:: 2.7

Examples

The simplest example of reading a CSV file:

import csv
with open('some.csv', 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    for row in reader:
        print row

Reading a file with an alternate format:

import csv
with open('passwd', 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f, delimiter=':', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
    for row in reader:
        print row

The corresponding simplest possible writing example is:

import csv
with open('some.csv', 'wb') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerows(someiterable)

Registering a new dialect:

import csv
csv.register_dialect('unixpwd', delimiter=':', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
with open('passwd', 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f, 'unixpwd')

A slightly more advanced use of the reader --- catching and reporting errors:

import csv, sys
filename = 'some.csv'
with open(filename, 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    try:
        for row in reader:
            print row
    except csv.Error as e:
        sys.exit('file %s, line %d: %s' % (filename, reader.line_num, e))

And while the module doesn't directly support parsing strings, it can easily be done:

import csv
for row in csv.reader(['one,two,three']):
    print row

The :mod:`csv` module doesn't directly support reading and writing Unicode, but it is 8-bit-clean save for some problems with ASCII NUL characters. So you can write functions or classes that handle the encoding and decoding for you as long as you avoid encodings like UTF-16 that use NULs. UTF-8 is recommended.

:func:`unicode_csv_reader` below is a :term:`generator` that wraps :class:`csv.reader` to handle Unicode CSV data (a list of Unicode strings). :func:`utf_8_encoder` is a :term:`generator` that encodes the Unicode strings as UTF-8, one string (or row) at a time. The encoded strings are parsed by the CSV reader, and :func:`unicode_csv_reader` decodes the UTF-8-encoded cells back into Unicode:

import csv

def unicode_csv_reader(unicode_csv_data, dialect=csv.excel, **kwargs):
    # csv.py doesn't do Unicode; encode temporarily as UTF-8:
    csv_reader = csv.reader(utf_8_encoder(unicode_csv_data),
                            dialect=dialect, **kwargs)
    for row in csv_reader:
        # decode UTF-8 back to Unicode, cell by cell:
        yield [unicode(cell, 'utf-8') for cell in row]

def utf_8_encoder(unicode_csv_data):
    for line in unicode_csv_data:
        yield line.encode('utf-8')

For all other encodings the following :class:`UnicodeReader` and :class:`UnicodeWriter` classes can be used. They take an additional encoding parameter in their constructor and make sure that the data passes the real reader or writer encoded as UTF-8:

import csv, codecs, cStringIO

class UTF8Recoder:
    """
    Iterator that reads an encoded stream and reencodes the input to UTF-8
    """
    def __init__(self, f, encoding):
        self.reader = codecs.getreader(encoding)(f)

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

    def next(self):
        return self.reader.next().encode("utf-8")

class UnicodeReader:
    """
    A CSV reader which will iterate over lines in the CSV file "f",
    which is encoded in the given encoding.
    """

    def __init__(self, f, dialect=csv.excel, encoding="utf-8", **kwds):
        f = UTF8Recoder(f, encoding)
        self.reader = csv.reader(f, dialect=dialect, **kwds)

    def next(self):
        row = self.reader.next()
        return [unicode(s, "utf-8") for s in row]

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

class UnicodeWriter:
    """
    A CSV writer which will write rows to CSV file "f",
    which is encoded in the given encoding.
    """

    def __init__(self, f, dialect=csv.excel, encoding="utf-8", **kwds):
        # Redirect output to a queue
        self.queue = cStringIO.StringIO()
        self.writer = csv.writer(self.queue, dialect=dialect, **kwds)
        self.stream = f
        self.encoder = codecs.getincrementalencoder(encoding)()

    def writerow(self, row):
        self.writer.writerow([s.encode("utf-8") for s in row])
        # Fetch UTF-8 output from the queue ...
        data = self.queue.getvalue()
        data = data.decode("utf-8")
        # ... and reencode it into the target encoding
        data = self.encoder.encode(data)
        # write to the target stream
        self.stream.write(data)
        # empty queue
        self.queue.truncate(0)

    def writerows(self, rows):
        for row in rows:
            self.writerow(row)