Consider s CSV file like this
item1,"description 1"
item2,"description 2"
item3,"description 3
description 3 continues on new line"
item4,"description 4"
which should be parsed like this
item1,"description 1"
item2,"description 2"
item3,"description 3 description 3 continues on new line"
item4,"description 4"
Is there a way to parse this CSV in PHP which has multiline values?
Here are some working examples how to do it. I am using fgetcsv:
CSV in string variable $CsvString:
$fp = tmpfile();
fwrite($fp, $CsvString);
rewind($fp); //rewind to process CSV
while (($row = fgetcsv($fp, 0)) !== FALSE) {
print_r($row);
}
CSV in file:
if (($handle = fopen("test.csv", "r")) !== FALSE) {
while (($row = fgetcsv($handle, 0, ",")) !== FALSE) {
print_r($row);
}
fclose($handle);
}
Based on StanleyD answer, but using a temp memory block (rather than writing to disk) for better performance:
$fp = fopen('php://temp','r+');
fwrite($fp, $CsvString);
rewind($fp); //rewind to process CSV
while (($row = fgetcsv($fp, 0)) !== FALSE) {
print_r($row);
}
fgetcsv should be able to properly parse this.
I wouldn't recommend doing this by hand anyway, there are many such gotchas in parsing CSV.
str_getcsv as it doesn't have to load the entire file into memory, just the row that is being red. fgetcsv does work with multiline CSV fields, but str_getcsv apparently does not.
fgetcsv also only reads one line at a time from an open file handle…!?Here is a quick and easy solution using the PHP function str_getcsv()
Here is an example:
function parse_csv( $filename_or_text, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"', $linebreak="\n" )
{
$return = array();
if(false !== ($csv = (filter_var($filename_or_text, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) ? file_get_contents($filename_or_text) : $filename_or_text)))
{
$csv = trim($csv);
$csv = mb_convert_encoding($csv, 'UTF-16LE');
foreach(str_getcsv($csv, $linebreak, $enclosure) as $row){
$col = str_getcsv($row, $delimiter, $enclosure);
$col = array_map('trim', $col);
$return[] = $col;
}
}
else
{
throw new \Exception('Can not open the file.');
$return = false;
}
return $return;
}
Imagine a situation where you need a function that works with both URL and comma delimited text. This is exactly the function that works like that. Just simply insert a CSV URL or comma separated text and it work nicely.
