KissCsv

A very fast, standards compliant and threadsafe CSV library with only a few, essential, configurable features.

This is a major overhaul and reworking of Michael Peterson's SimpleCsv . It is released under the same Apache Version 2.0 License.

KissCsv is a fully mime (text/csv) compliant parser according to http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180

Why make another csv parser?

Both OpenCSV and SimpleCSV had too many features for me. So I decided to make one that is compliant, faster and ... threadsafe. Along the way I fixed a few features:

In most csv data, whitepace outside of the quoted value is to be ignored. OpenCSV was missing the ability to trim whitespace after a closing quote and before the next separator.
SimpleCsv was missing embedded carriage returns and doubled-escaped quotes within quoted values.

KissCsv can be configured with:

custom field separator
custom quote character
setting to trim all fields of whitespace (even quoted fields).

To get this Git project into your build:

Follow instructions at https://jitpack.io/#footloosejava/kisscsv or these steps for Maven:

Step 1. Add the JitPack repository to your build file

<repository>
    <id>jitpack.io</id>
    <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
</repository>

Step 2. Add the dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.footloosejava</groupId>
    <artifactId>kisscsv</artifactId>
    <version>v1.1</version>
</dependency>

What You Need to Know:

If a quote character is specified, whitespace outside of a quote is ignored.

With " quote character set, A,B, "HELLO" ,D is parsed as A,B,HELLO,D

With null quote character set, A,B, "HELLO" ,D is parsed as is.
KissCsv properly handles embedded carriage returns in quoted values:

A,B, "HELLO\r\nWORLD" ,D is parsed as A,B,HELLO\r\nWORLD,D
KissCsv properly recognizes \r or \r\n as record endings. These two are parsed as 2 records, consisting of 4 fields each:

A,B, "HELLO\r\nWORLD" ,D[CR]E,F,G,H

A,B, "HELLO\r\nWORLD" ,D[CR+LF]E,F,G,H
KissCsv meets a simple use scenario - it does not recognize or use any escape characters.
KissCsv recognizes doubled quotes "" as single quotes inside a quoted value:

"A quote "" is what a quote is!" is parsed as A quote " is what a quote is!
KissCsv parser complains if a quote character is set and fields are malformed:

a) Non-whitespace found before opening quote. Hello"World" will throw a KissException: Character found before first quote.

b) Non-whitespace found after closing quote. "HELLO" WORLD will throw a KissException: Record has already been closed (matched quotes found)
KissCsv KissParser is memory-frugal, threadsafe and very fast.

Example - Reading a `String[]`

The default KissParser constructor has the following settings:

separator = ','
quote character = '"'
trim fields = false

String[] firstRecord = {"1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7"};

String[] secondRecord = {
    "LU",
    "86.25",
    "11/4/1998",
    "2:19PM",
    "His name is \"BOB\"",
    "+4.0625",
    ""
};

String data = "1,2,3,4,5,6,7\n"
    + "\"LU\",86.25,\"11/4/1998\",\"2:19PM\",\"His name is \"\"BOB\"\"\",+4.0625, \"\" ";

// The KissParser can be configured once and then used with any number of KissReaders simultaneously.
KissParser cp = new KissParser();

// Just like Bufferedreader, null is returned when there is no more data.
KissReader cr = new KissReader(new StringReader(data), cp);

assertArrayEquals(firstRecord, cr.readNext());
assertArrayEquals(secondRecord, cr.readNext());
assertArrayEquals(null, cr.readNext());

Example - Using a Consumer to Process Data

Processing record data using a consumer without String[] creation.

String data = "1,2,3,4,5";
KissParser cp = new KissParser();
KissReader cr = new KissReader(new StringReader(data), cp);

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
assertEquals(5, cr.readNext(sb::append));
assertEquals("12345", sb.toString());

If EOF, the consumer is never called and -1 is returned.

String data = "";
KissParser cp = new KissParser();
KissReader cr = new KissReader(new StringReader(data), cp);

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
assertEquals(-1, cr.readNext(sb::append));
assertEquals("", sb.toString());
}