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CSV

Reader Connection

The League\Csv\Reader class extends the general connections capabilities to ease selecting and manipulating CSV document records. Starting with version 9.6.0, the class implements the League\Csv\TabularDataReader interface.

Starting with version 9.1.0, createFromPath has its default open_mode parameter set to r.

Prior to 9.1.0, the open mode was r+ which looks for write permissions on the file and throws an Exception if the file cannot be opened with the permission set. For sake of clarity, it is strongly suggested to set r mode on the file to ensure it can be opened.

The Reader provides a convenient and straight forward API to access and handle CSV. While most of its capabilities are explained in the Tabular Data Reader documentation page, the current page will focus on Reader specific features and/or properties.

CSV example

Many examples in this reference require a CSV file. We will use the following file file.csv containing the following data:

"First Name","Last Name",E-mail
john,doe,john.doe@example.com
jane,doe,jane.doe@example.com
john,john,john.john@example.com
jane,jane

Records normalization

General Rules

The returned records are normalized using the following rules:

  • Stream filters are applied if present.
  • Empty records are skipped if present.
  • The document BOM sequence is skipped if present.
  • If a header record was provided, the number of fields is normalized to the number of fields contained in that record:
    • Extra fields are truncated.
    • Missing fields are added with a null value.
  • Field values are formatter if formatters are provided Since version 9.11
use League\Csv\Reader;

$reader = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/my/file.csv', 'r');
$reader->setHeaderOffset(0);
$records = $reader->getRecords();
foreach ($records as $offset => $record) {
    //$offset : represents the record offset
    //var_export($record) returns something like
    // array(
    //  'First Name' => 'jane',
    //  'Last Name' => 'jane',
    //  'E-mail' => null
    // );
}

Record Formatter

New since version 9.11.0

A formatter is a callable which accepts a single CSV record as an array on input and returns an array representing the formatted CSV record according to its inner rules.

function(array $record): array

You can attach as many formatters as you want to the Reader class using the Reader::addFormatter method. Formatters are applied following the First In First Out rule.

Formatting happens AFTER combining the header and the fields value if a header is available and CSV value BUT BEFORE< you can access the actual value.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$csv = <<<CSV
firstname,lastname,e-mail
john,doe,john.doe@example.com
CSV;

$formatter = fn (array $row): array => array_map(strtoupper(...), $row);
$reader = Reader::createFromString($csv)
    ->setHeaderOffset(0)
    ->addFormatter($formatter);
[...$reader]; 
// [
//     [
//         'firstname' => 'JOHN',
//         'lastname' => DOE',
//         'e-mail' => 'JOHN.DOE@EXAMPLE.COM',
//     ],
//];

echo $reader->toString(); //returns the original $csv value without the formatting.

If a header is selected it won't be affected by the formatting

Formatting does not affect the CSV document content.

Controlling the presence of empty records

New since version 9.4.0

By default, the CSV document normalization removes empty records, but you can control the presence of such records using the following methods:

Reader::skipEmptyRecords(): self;
Reader::includeEmptyRecords(): self;
Reader::isEmptyRecordsIncluded(): bool;
  • Calling Reader::includeEmptyRecords will ensure empty records are left in the Iterator returned by Reader::getRecords, conversely Reader::skipEmptyRecords will ensure empty records are skipped.
  • At any given time you can ask your Reader instance if empty records will be stripped or included using the Reader::isEmptyRecordsIncluded method.
  • If no header offset is specified, the empty record will be represented by an empty array. Conversely, for consistency, an empty record will be represented by an array filled with null values as expected from header presence normalization.

The record offset is always independent of the presence of empty records.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$source = <<<EOF
"parent name","child name","title"


"parentA","childA","titleA"
EOF;

$reader = Reader::createFromString($source);
$reader->isEmptyRecordsIncluded(); //returns false
iterator_to_array($reader, true);
// [
//     0 => ['parent name', 'child name', 'title'],
//     3 => ['parentA', 'childA', 'titleA'],
// ];

$reader->includeEmptyRecords();
$reader->isEmptyRecordsIncluded(); //returns true
iterator_to_array($reader, true);
// [
//     0 => ['parent name', 'child name', 'title'],
//     1 => [],
//     2 => [],
//     3 => ['parentA', 'childA', 'titleA'],
// ];

$reader->setHeaderOffset(0);
iterator_to_array($reader, true);
// [
//     1 => ['parent name' => null, 'child name' => null, 'title' => null],
//     2 => ['parent name' => null, 'child name' => null, 'title' => null],
//     3 => ['parent name' => 'parentA', 'child name' => 'childA', 'title' => 'titleA'],
// ];

$reader->skipEmptyRecords();
$reader->isEmptyRecordsIncluded(); //returns false
$res = iterator_to_array($reader, true);
// [
//     3 => ['parent name' => 'parentA', 'child name' => 'childA', 'title' => 'titleA'],
// ];

Document header

While accessing the CSV header is done via the getHeader method which is part of the TabularDataReader API, Because CSV documents come in difference shape and form the class exposes a way to select and get the document Header record via the setHeaderOffset and getHeaderOffset method.

Description

public Reader::setHeaderOffset(?int $offset): self
public Reader::getHeaderOffset(void): ?int
public Reader::getHeader(void): array

Example

use League\Csv\Reader;

$csv = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/file.csv', 'r');
$csv->setHeaderOffset(0);
$header_offset = $csv->getHeaderOffset(); //returns 0
$header = $csv->getHeader(); //returns ['First Name', 'Last Name', 'E-mail']

If no header offset is set:

  • Reader::getHeader method will return an empty array.
  • Reader::getHeaderOffset will return null.

By default no header offset is set.

Because the header is lazy loaded, if you provide a positive offset for an invalid record a SyntaxError exception will be triggered when trying to access the invalid record.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$csv = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/file.csv', 'r');
$csv->setHeaderOffset(1000); //valid offset but the CSV does not contain 1000 records
$header_offset = $csv->getHeaderOffset(); //returns 1000
$header = $csv->getHeader(); //throws a SyntaxError exception

Because the CSV document is treated as tabular data the header can not contain duplicate entries. If the header contains duplicates an exception will be thrown on usage.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$csv = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/file.csv', 'r');
$csv->nth(0); //returns ['field1', 'field2', 'field1', 'field4']
$csv->setHeaderOffset(0); //valid offset but the record contain duplicates
$header_offset = $csv->getHeaderOffset(); //returns 0
$records = $csv->getRecords(); //throws a SyntaxError exception

Starting with 9.7.0 the SyntaxError exception thrown will return the list of duplicate column names.

use League\Csv\Reader;
use League\Csv\SyntaxError;

$csv = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/file.csv', 'r');
$csv->nth(0); //returns ['field1', 'field2', 'field1', 'field4']
$csv->setHeaderOffset(0); //valid offset but the record contain duplicates
$header_offset = $csv->getHeaderOffset(); //returns 0
try {
    $records = $csv->getRecords(); //throws a SyntaxError exception
} catch (SyntaxError $exception) {
    $duplicates = $exception->duplicateColumnNames(); //returns ['field1']
}

Document records

To access the CSV records you will need to use the getRecords or the getRecordsAsObjects methods. The methods returns an Iterator containing all CSV document records as array or as objects. It will extract the records using the CSV controls characters.

getRecords and getRecordsAsObjects are part of the TabularDataReader API.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$reader = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/my/file.csv', 'r');
$records = $reader->getRecords();
foreach ($records as $offset => $record) {
    //$offset : represents the record offset
    //var_export($record) returns something like
    // array(
    //  'john',
    //  'doe',
    //  'john.doe@example.com'
    // );
}

Records selection with Reader::setHeaderOffset

Just like the getHeader method, the method output depends on the header record selected using setHeaderOffset.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$reader = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/my/file.csv', 'r');
$reader->setHeaderOffset(0);
$records = $reader->getRecords();
foreach ($records as $offset => $record) {
    //$offset : represents the record offset
    //var_export($record) returns something like
    // array(
    //  'First Name' => 'jane',
    //  'Last Name' => 'doe',
    //  'E-mail' => 'jane.doe@example.com'
    // );
}

The optional $header argument from the Reader::getRecords takes precedence over the header offset property but its corresponding record will still be removed from the returned Iterator.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$reader = Reader::createFromPath('/path/to/my/file.csv', 'r');
$reader->setHeaderOffset(0);
$records = $reader->getRecords(['firstname', 'lastname', 'email']);
foreach ($records as $offset => $record) {
    //$offset : represents the record offset
    //var_export($record) returns something like
    // array(
    //  'firstname' => 'jane',
    //  'lastname' => 'doe',
    //  'email' => 'jane.doe@example.com'
    // );
}
//the first record will still be skipped!!

Selecting records

Please header over the TabularDataReader documentation page for more information on the class features. If you require a more advance record selection, you should use a Statement or a FragmentFinder class to process the Reader object. The found records are returned as a ResultSet object.

Records conversion

Json serialization

A dedicated JsonConverter class is added in version 9.17.0 to help converting CSV into proper JSON document without consuming too much memory. It is the recommended way to convert to JSON.

The Reader class implements the JsonSerializable interface. As such you can use the json_encode function directly on the instantiated object. The interface is implemented using PHP’s iterator_array on the Reader::getRecords method. As such, the returned JSON string data depends on the presence or absence of a header.

use League\Csv\Reader;

$records = [
    ['firstname', 'lastname', 'e-mail', 'phone'],
    ['john', 'doe', 'john.doe@example.com', '0123456789'],
];

$tmp = new SplTempFileObject();
foreach ($records as $record) {
    $tmp->fputcsv($record);
}

$reader = Reader::createFromFileObject($tmp);
echo '<pre>', PHP_EOL;
echo json_encode($reader, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT), PHP_EOL;
//display
//[
//    [
//        "firstname",
//        "lastname",
//        "e-mail",
//        "phone"
//    ],
//    [
//        "john",
//        "doe",
//        "john.doe@example.com",
//        "0123456789"
//    ]
//]

$reader->setHeaderOffset(0);
echo '<pre>', PHP_EOL;
echo json_encode($result, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT), PHP_EOL;
//display
//[
//    {
//        "firstname": "john",
//        "lastname": "doe",
//        "e-mail": "john.doe@example.com",
//        "phone": "0123456789"
//    }
//]

The record offset is not preserved on conversion

To convert your CSV to JSON you must be sure its content is UTF-8 encoded, using, for instance, the library CharsetConverter stream filter.

Other conversions

If you wish to convert your CSV document in XML or HTML please refer to the converters bundled with this library.