Get In That DB! Parsing CSV Using Ruby

Question

I have a CSV file formatted just like this:

name,color,tasty,qty
apple,red,true,3
orange,orange,false,4
pear,greenish-yellowish,true,1

As you can see, each column in the Ruby OO world represents a mix of types -- string, string, boolean, int.

Now, ultimately, I want to parse each line in the file, determine the appropriate type, and insert that row into a database via a Rails migration. For ex:

Fruit.create(:name => 'apple', :color => 'red', :tasty => true, :qty => 3)

Help!

What was the standard 7 years ago?

keruilin
– keruilin

2017-03-08 11:46:59 +00:00
Commented Mar 8, 2017 at 11:46 — keruilin
– keruilin, Commented Mar 8, 2017 at 11:46

yfeldblum · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-09 21:19:00Z

5

For Ruby 1.8:

require 'fastercsv'

FasterCSV.parse(my_string, :headers => true) do |row|
  Fruit.create!(
    :name => row['name'],
    :color => row['color'],
    :tasty => row['tasty'] == 'true',
    :qty => row['qty].to_i
  )
end

For Ruby 1.9, just rename FasterCSV to CSV and fastercsv to csv:

require 'csv'

CSV.parse(my_string, :headers => true) do |row|
  # same as ruby-1.8
end

edited Apr 9, 2010 at 21:19

answered Apr 9, 2010 at 18:34

yfeldblum

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3 Comments

Tony Fontenot Over a year ago

FasterCVS is a gem so you may have to install and don't forget to require 'fastercvs'

keruilin Over a year ago

I'm getting this error: "Please switch to Ruby 1.9's standard CSV library. It's FasterCSV plus support for Ruby 1.9's m17n encoding engine." Any idea how to handle?

the Tin Man Over a year ago

FasterCSV is now part of Ruby as its default CSV class so just use require 'csv' and you'll be good to go.

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