Parse CSV file with header fields as attributes for each row

Using Ruby 1.9 and above, you can get a an indexable object:

CSV.foreach('my_file.csv', :headers => true) do |row|
  puts row['foo'] # prints 1 the 1st time, "blah" 2nd time, etc
  puts row['bar'] # prints 2 the first time, 7 the 2nd time, etc
end

It's not dot syntax but it is much nicer to work with than numeric indexes.

As an aside, for Ruby 1.8.x FasterCSV is what you need to use the above syntax.

Here is an example of the symbolic syntax using Ruby 1.9. In the examples below, the code reads a CSV file named data.csv from Rails db directory.

:headers => true treats the first row as a header instead of a data row. :header_converters => :symbolize parameter then converts each cell in the header row into Ruby symbol.

CSV.foreach("#{Rails.root}/db/data.csv", {:headers => true, :header_converters => :symbol}) do |row|
  puts "#{row[:foo]},#{row[:bar]},#{row[:baz]}"
end

In Ruby 1.8:

require 'fastercsv'
CSV.foreach("#{Rails.root}/db/data.csv", {:headers => true, :header_converters => :symbol}) do |row|
  puts "#{row[:foo]},#{row[:bar]},#{row[:baz]}"
end

Based on the CSV provided by the Poul (the StackOverflow asker), the output from the example code above will be:

1,2,3
blah,7,blam
4,5,6

Depending on the characters used in the headers of the CSV file, it may be necessary to output the headers in order to see how CSV (FasterCSV) converted the string headers to symbols. You can output the array of headers from within the CSV.foreach.

row.headers