DBD::CSV(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation DBD::CSV(3)NAMEDBD::CSV - DBI driver for CSV files
SYNOPSIS
use DBI;
# See "Creating database handle" below
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:") or
die "Cannot connect: $DBI::errstr";
# Simple statements
$dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE a (id INTEGER, name CHAR (10))") or
die "Cannot prepare: " . $dbh->errstr ();
# Selecting
$dbh->{RaiseError} = 1;
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("select * from foo");
$sth->execute;
while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array) {
print "id: $row[0], name: $row[1]\n";
}
# Updates
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("UPDATE a SET name = ? WHERE id = ?");
$sth->execute ("DBI rocks!", 1);
$sth->finish;
$dbh->disconnect;
DESCRIPTION
The DBD::CSV module is yet another driver for the DBI (Database
independent interface for Perl). This one is based on the SQL "engine"
SQL::Statement and the abstract DBI driver DBD::File and implements
access to so-called CSV files (Comma Separated Values). Such files are
often used for exporting MS Access and MS Excel data.
See DBI for details on DBI, SQL::Statement for details on
SQL::Statement and DBD::File for details on the base class DBD::File.
Prerequisites
The only system dependent feature that DBD::File uses, is the "flock
()" function. Thus the module should run (in theory) on any system with
a working "flock ()", in particular on all Unix machines and on Windows
NT. Under Windows 95 and MacOS the use of "flock ()" is disabled, thus
the module should still be usable.
Unlike other DBI drivers, you don't need an external SQL engine or a
running server. All you need are the following Perl modules, available
from any CPAN mirror, for example
http://search.cpan.org/
DBI The DBI (Database independent interface for Perl), version 1.00 or
a later release
DBD::File
This is the base class for DBD::CSV, and it is part of the DBI
distribution. As DBD::CSV requires version 0.38 or newer for
DBD::File it effectively requires DBI version 1.611 or newer.
SQL::Statement
A simple SQL engine. This module defines all of the SQL syntax for
DBD::CSV, new SQL support is added with each release so you should
look for updates to SQL::Statement regularly.
It is possible to run "DBD::CSV" without this module if you define
the environment variable $DBI_SQL_NANO to 1. This will reduce the
SQL support a lot though. See DBI::SQL::Nano for more details. Note
that the test suite does not test in this mode!
Text::CSV_XS
This module is used for writing rows to or reading rows from CSV
files.
Installation
Installing this module (and the prerequisites from above) is quite
simple. The simplest way is to install the bundle:
$ cpan Bundle::CSV
Alternatively, you can name them all
$ cpan Text::CSV_XS DBI DBD::CSV
or even trust "cpan" to resolve all dependencies for you:
$ cpan DBD::CSV
If you cannot, for whatever reason, use cpan, fetch all modules from
CPAN, and build with a sequence like:
gzip -d < DBD-CSV-0.28.tgz | tar xf -
(this is for Unix users, Windows users would prefer WinZip or something
similar) and then enter the following:
cd DBD-CSV-0.28
perl Makefile.PL
make test
If any tests fail, let us know. Otherwise go on with
make install UNINST=1
Note that you almost definitely need root or administrator permissions.
If you don't have them, read the ExtUtils::MakeMaker man page for
details on installing in your own directories. ExtUtils::MakeMaker.
Supported SQL Syntax
All SQL processing for DBD::CSV is done by the SQL::Statement module.
Features include joins, aliases, built-in and user-defined functions,
and more. See SQL::Statement::Syntax for a description of the SQL
syntax supported in DBD::CSV.
Table names are case insensitive unless quoted.
Using DBD::CSV with DBI
For most things, DBD-CSV operates the same as any DBI driver. See DBI
for detailed usage.
Creating a database handle (connect)
Creating a database handle usually implies connecting to a database
server. Thus this command reads
use DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
f_dir => "/home/user/folder",
});
The directory tells the driver where it should create or open tables
(a.k.a. files). It defaults to the current directory, so the following
are equivalent:
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:");
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, { f_dir => "." });
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:f_dir=.");
We were told, that VMS might - for whatever reason - require:
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:f_dir=");
The preferred way of passing the arguments is by driver attributes:
# specify most possible flags via driver flags
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
f_schema => undef,
f_dir => "data",
f_ext => ".csv/r",
f_lock => 2,
f_encoding => "utf8",
csv_eol => "\r\n",
csv_sep_char => ",",
csv_quote_char => '"',
csv_escape_char => '"',
csv_class => "Text::CSV_XS",
csv_null => 1,
csv_tables => {
info => { file => "info.csv" }
},
RaiseError => 1,
PrintError => 1,
FetchHashKeyName => "NAME_lc",
}) or die $DBI::errstr;
but you may set these attributes in the DSN as well, separated by
semicolons. Pay attention to the semi-colon for "csv_sep_char" (as
seen in many CSV exports from MS Excel) is being escaped in below
example, as is would otherwise be seen as attribute separator:
$dbh = DBI->connect (
"dbi:CSV:f_dir=$ENV{HOME}/csvdb;f_ext=.csv;f_lock=2;" .
"f_encoding=utf8;csv_eol=\n;csv_sep_char=\\;;" .
"csv_quote_char=\";csv_escape_char=\\;csv_class=Text::CSV_XS;" .
"csv_null=1") or die $DBI::errstr;
Using attributes in the DSN is easier to use when the DSN is derived
from an outside source (environment variable, database entry, or
configure file), whereas using all entries in the attribute hash is
easier to read and to maintain.
Creating and dropping tables
You can create and drop tables with commands like the following:
$dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE $table (id INTEGER, name CHAR (64))");
$dbh->do ("DROP TABLE $table");
Note that currently only the column names will be stored and no other
data. Thus all other information including column type (INTEGER or
CHAR (x), for example), column attributes (NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY, ...)
will silently be discarded. This may change in a later release.
A drop just removes the file without any warning.
See DBI for more details.
Table names cannot be arbitrary, due to restrictions of the SQL syntax.
I recommend that table names are valid SQL identifiers: The first
character is alphabetic, followed by an arbitrary number of
alphanumeric characters. If you want to use other files, the file names
must start with "/", "./" or "../" and they must not contain white
space.
Inserting, fetching and modifying data
The following examples insert some data in a table and fetch it back:
First all data in the string:
$dbh->do ("INSERT INTO $table VALUES (1, ".
$dbh->quote ("foobar") . ")");
Note the use of the quote method for escaping the word "foobar". Any
string must be escaped, even if it does not contain binary data.
Next an example using parameters:
$dbh->do ("INSERT INTO $table VALUES (?, ?)", undef, 2,
"It's a string!");
Note that you don't need to use the quote method here, this is done
automatically for you. This version is particularly well designed for
loops. Whenever performance is an issue, I recommend using this method.
You might wonder about the "undef". Don't wonder, just take it as it
is. :-) It's an attribute argument that I have never ever used and will
be parsed to the prepare method as a second argument.
To retrieve data, you can use the following:
my $query = "SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id > 1 ORDER BY id";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ($query);
$sth->execute ();
while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
print "Found result row: id = ", $row->{id},
", name = ", $row->{name};
}
$sth->finish ();
Again, column binding works: The same example again.
my $sth = $dbh->prepare (qq;
SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id > 1 ORDER BY id;
;);
$sth->execute;
my ($id, $name);
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
while ($sth->fetch) {
print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
}
$sth->finish;
Of course you can even use input parameters. Here's the same example
for the third time:
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?");
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
$sth->execute ($id);
if ($sth->fetch) {
print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
}
$sth->finish;
}
See DBI for details on these methods. See SQL::Statement for details on
the WHERE clause.
Data rows are modified with the UPDATE statement:
$dbh->do ("UPDATE $table SET id = 3 WHERE id = 1");
Likewise you use the DELETE statement for removing rows:
$dbh->do ("DELETE FROM $table WHERE id > 1");
Error handling
In the above examples we have never cared about return codes. Of
course, this cannot be recommended. Instead we should have written (for
example):
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?") or
die "prepare: " . $dbh->errstr ();
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name) or
die "bind_columns: " . $dbh->errstr ();
for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
$sth->execute ($id) or
die "execute: " . $dbh->errstr ();
$sth->fetch and
print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
}
$sth->finish ($id) or die "finish: " . $dbh->errstr ();
Obviously this is tedious. Fortunately we have DBI's RaiseError
attribute:
$dbh->{RaiseError} = 1;
$@ = "";
eval {
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?");
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
$sth->execute ($id);
$sth->fetch and
print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
}
$sth->finish ($id);
};
$@ and die "SQL database error: $@";
This is not only shorter, it even works when using DBI methods within
subroutines.
DBI database handle attributes
Metadata
The following attributes are handled by DBI itself and not by
DBD::File, thus they all work as expected:
Active
ActiveKids
CachedKids
CompatMode (Not used)
InactiveDestroy
Kids
PrintError
RaiseError
Warn (Not used)
The following DBI attributes are handled by DBD::File:
AutoCommit
Always on
ChopBlanks
Works
NUM_OF_FIELDS
Valid after "$sth->execute"
NUM_OF_PARAMS
Valid after "$sth->prepare"
NAME
NAME_lc
NAME_uc
Valid after "$sth->execute"; undef for Non-Select statements.
NULLABLE
Not really working. Always returns an array ref of one's, as
DBD::CSV does not verify input data. Valid after "$sth->execute";
undef for non-Select statements.
These attributes and methods are not supported:
bind_param_inout
CursorName
LongReadLen
LongTruncOk
DBD-CSV specific database handle attributes
In addition to the DBI attributes, you can use the following dbh
attributes:
f_dir
This attribute is used for setting the directory where CSV files
are opened. Usually you set it in the dbh, it defaults to the
current directory ("."). However, it is overwritable in the
statement handles.
f_ext
This attribute is used for setting the file extension.
f_schema
This attribute allows you to set the database schema name. The
default is to use the owner of "f_dir". "undef" is allowed, but not
in the DSN part.
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
f_schema => undef,
f_dir => "data",
f_ext => ".csv/r",
}) or die $DBI::errstr;
f_encoding
This attribute allows you to set the encoding of the data. With
CSV, it is not possible to set (and remember) the encoding on a
per-field basis, but DBD::File now allows to set the encoding of
the underlying file. If this attribute is not set, or undef is
passed, the file will be seen as binary.
f_lock
With this attribute, you can force locking mode (if locking is
supported at all) for opening tables. By default, tables are opened
with a shared lock for reading, and with an exclusive lock for
writing. The supported modes are:
0 Force no locking at all.
1 Only shared locks will be used.
2 Only exclusive locks will be used.
But see "KNOWN BUGS" in DBD::File.
csv_eol
csv_sep_char
csv_quote_char
csv_escape_char
csv_class
csv_csv
The attributes csv_eol, csv_sep_char, csv_quote_char and
csv_escape_char are corresponding to the respective attributes of
the Text::CSV_XS object. You want to set these attributes if you
have unusual CSV files like /etc/passwd or MS Excel generated CSV
files with a semicolon as separator. Defaults are "\015\012", ';',
'"' and '"', respectively.
The csv_eol attribute defines the end-of-line pattern, which is
better known as a record separator pattern since it separates
records. The default is windows-style end-of-lines "\015\012" for
output (writing) and unset for input (reading), so if on unix you
may want to set this to newline ("\n") like this:
$dbh->{csv_eol} = "\n";
It is also possible to use multi-character patterns as record
separators. For example this file uses newlines as field
separators (sep_char) and the pattern "\n__ENDREC__\n" as the
record separators (eol):
name
city
__ENDREC__
joe
seattle
__ENDREC__
sue
portland
__ENDREC__
To handle this file, you'd do this:
$dbh->{eol} = "\n__ENDREC__\n" ,
$dbh->{sep_char} = "\n"
The attributes are used to create an instance of the class
csv_class, by default Text::CSV_XS. Alternatively you may pass an
instance as csv_csv, the latter takes precedence. Note that the
binary attribute must be set to a true value in that case.
Additionally you may overwrite these attributes on a per-table base
in the csv_tables attribute.
csv_null
With this option set, all new statement handles will set
"always_quote" and "blank_is_undef" in the CSV parser and writer,
so it knows how to distinguish between the empty string and "undef"
or "NULL". You cannot reset it with a false value. You can pass it
to connect, or set it later:
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", { csv_null => 1 });
$dbh->{csv_null} = 1;
csv_tables
This hash ref is used for storing table dependent metadata. For any
table it contains an element with the table name as key and another
hash ref with the following attributes:
csv_*
All other attributes that start with "csv_" and are not described
above will be passed to "Text::CSV_XS" (without the "csv_" prefix).
these extra options are most likely to be only useful for reading
(select) handles. Examples:
$dbh->{csv_allow_whitespace} = 1;
$dbh->{csv_allow_loose_quotes} = 1;
$dbh->{csv_allow_loose_escapes} = 1;
See the "Text::CSV_XS" documentation for the full list and the
documentation.
file
The tables file name; defaults to
"$dbh->{f_dir}/$table"
eol
sep_char
quote_char
escape_char
class
csv These correspond to the attributes csv_eol, csv_sep_char,
csv_quote_char, csv_escape_char, csv_class and csv_csv. The
difference is that they work on a per-table base.
col_names
skip_first_row
By default DBD::CSV assumes that column names are stored in the
first row of the CSV file and sanitizes them (see "raw_header"
below). If this is not the case, you can supply an array ref of
table names with the col_names attribute. In that case the
attribute skip_first_row will be set to FALSE.
If you supply an empty array ref, the driver will read the
first row for you, count the number of columns and create
column names like "col0", "col1", ...
raw_header
Due to the SQL standard, field names cannot contain special
characters like a dot ("."). Following the approach of
mdb_tools, all these tokens are translated to an underscore
("_") when reading the first line of the CSV file, so all field
names are `sanitized'. If you do not want this to happen, set
"raw_header" to a true value. DBD::CSV cannot guarantee that
any part in the toolchain will work if field names have those
characters, and the chances are high that the SQL statements
will fail.
It's strongly recommended to check the attributes supported by
"Metadata" in DBD::File.
Example: Suggest you want to use /etc/passwd as a CSV file. :-) There
simplest way is:
use DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
f_dir => "/etc",
csv_sep_char => ":",
csv_quote_char => undef,
csv_escape_char => undef,
});
$dbh->{csv_tables}{passwd} = {
col_names => [qw( login password uid gid realname
directory shell )];
};
$sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM passwd");
Another possibility where you leave all the defaults as they are and
overwrite them on a per table base:
require DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:");
$dbh->{csv_tables}{passwd} = {
eol => "\n",
sep_char => ":",
quote_char => undef,
escape_char => undef,
file => "/etc/passwd",
col_names => [qw( login password uid gid
realname directory shell )],
};
$sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM passwd");
Driver private methods
These methods are inherited from DBD::File:
data_sources
The "data_sources" method returns a list of sub-directories of the
current directory in the form "dbi:CSV:directory=$dirname".
If you want to read the sub-directories of another directory, use
my $drh = DBI->install_driver ("CSV");
my @list = $drh->data_sources (f_dir => "/usr/local/csv_data");
list_tables
This method returns a list of file names inside $dbh->{directory}.
Example:
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:directory=/usr/local/csv_data");
my @list = $dbh->func ("list_tables");
Note that the list includes all files contained in the directory,
even those that have non-valid table names, from the view of SQL.
See "Creating and dropping tables" above.
KNOWN ISSUES
ยท The module is using flock () internally. However, this function is
not available on platforms. Using flock () is disabled on MacOS and
Windows 95: There's no locking at all (perhaps not so important on
these operating systems, as they are for single users anyways).
TODO
Tests
Aim for a full 100% code coverage
- eol Make tests for different record separators.
- csv_xs Test with a variety of combinations for
sep_char, quote_char, and escape_char testing
- quoting $dbh->do ("drop table $_") for DBI-tables ();
- errors Make sure that all documented exceptions are tested.
. write to write-protected file
. read from badly formatted csv
. pass bad arguments to csv parser while fetching
Add tests that specifically test DBD::File functionality where that
is useful.
RT Attack all open DBD::CSV bugs in RT
CPAN::Forum
Attack all items in http://www.cpanforum.com/dist/DBD-CSV
Documentation
Expand on error-handling, and document all possible errors. Use
Text::CSV_XS::error_diag () wherever possible.
Debugging
Implement and document dbd_verbose.
Data dictionary
Investigate the possibility to store the data dictionary in a file
like .sys$columns that can store the field attributes (type, key,
nullable).
Examples
Make more real-life examples from the docs in examples/
SEE ALSO
DBI, Text::CSV_XS, SQL::Statement, DBI::SQL::Nano
For help on the use of DBD::CSV, see the DBI users mailing list:
http://lists.cpan.org/showlist.cgi?name=dbi-users
For general information on DBI see
http://dbi.perl.org/ and http://faq.dbi-support.com/
AUTHORS and MAINTAINERS
This module is currently maintained by
H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
in close cooperation with and help from
Jens Rehsack <sno@NetBSD.org>
The original author is Jochen Wiedmann. Previous maintainer was Jeff
Zucker
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2009-2010 by H.Merijn Brand Copyright (C) 2004-2009 by
Jeff Zucker Copyright (C) 1998-2004 by Jochen Wiedmann
All rights reserved.
You may distribute this module under the terms of either the GNU
General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the
Perl README file.
perl v5.14.1 2010-09-16 DBD::CSV(3)