Python csv string to array

Anyone know of a simple library or function to parse a csv encoded string and turn it into an array or dictionary?

I don't think I want the built in csv module because in all the examples I've seen that takes filepaths, not strings.

Solution 1:

You can convert a string to a file object using io.StringIO and then pass that to the csv module:

from io import StringIO
import csv

scsv = """text,with,Polish,non-Latin,letters
1,2,3,4,5,6
a,b,c,d,e,f
gęś,zółty,wąż,idzie,wąską,dróżką,
"""

f = StringIO(scsv)
reader = csv.reader(f, delimiter=',')
for row in reader:
    print('\t'.join(row))

simpler version with split() on newlines:

reader = csv.reader(scsv.split('\n'), delimiter=',')
for row in reader:
    print('\t'.join(row))

Or you can simply split() this string into lines using \n as separator, and then split() each line into values, but this way you must be aware of quoting, so using csv module is preferred.

On Python 2 you have to import StringIO as

from StringIO import StringIO

instead.

Solution 2:

Simple - the csv module works with lists, too:

>>> a=["1,2,3","4,5,6"]  # or a = "1,2,3\n4,5,6".split('\n')
>>> import csv
>>> x = csv.reader(a)
>>> list(x)
[['1', '2', '3'], ['4', '5', '6']]