CSV GP: Diagnose all your CSV issues

CSVs are a ubiquitous format for data transfer that are commonly riddled with issues. Most CSV libraries abort with an unhelpful error, CSV GP allows you to pinpoint these common issues with a CSV file, as well as export just the parsable lines from a file.

Installation

CSV GP can be used in three ways.

Standalone binary

1. Install rust
2. Clone the repo and navigate into it
3. Run cargo install --path csv_gp
4. The csv-gp command will now be available to run, please see csv-gp --help for usage

Rust library

Add the following to your Cargo.toml:

csv-gp = { git = "https://github.com/xelixdev/csv-gp", rev = "<optional git tag>" }

Python library

From package manager

The library is available on PyPI, at https://pypi.org/project/csv-gp/ so you can just run:

pip install csv-gp

Compiling from source

1. Install rust
2. Install (pip install maturin)
3. Clone the repo
4. Run make all
5. cd csv_gp_python && maturin develop

Usage

Rust standalone binary

After installing the binary, the default usage is running csv-gp $FILE. This will print a diagnosis of the file. The command provides options to change the delimiter and the encoding of the file. See csv-gp -h for details.

Another option provided is --correct-rows-path which will export only the correct rows to the provided path.

Python library

The python library exposes two main functions, check_file and get_rows.

The check file function takes a path to file, the delimiter and the encoding (see https://github.com/xelixdev/csv-gp/blob/0f77c62841509c134a3bbe06ec178426e9c5aa10/csv_gp_python/csv_gp.pyi) and returns an instance of a class CSVDetails which provides details about the file. See the same file to see all the available attributes and their names/types. If the valid_rows_output_path argument is provided to the function, only the correct rows will be exported to that path.

The get_rows once again takes a path to file, the delimiter and the encoding and additionally a list of row numbers. The function will then return the parsed cells for given rows. See the above file for the exact typing of the parameter and returned values.

Releasing a new version of the Python lib

1. Update version numbers in csv_gp_python/Cargo.toml, csv_go/Cargo.toml, and csv_gp_python/pyproject.toml
2. Run cargo check to update the lock files with new versions
3. Merge this change into main
4. Create a new release on GitHub, creating a tag in the form vX.Y.Z
5. The 'Publish' pipeline should begin running, and the new version will be published

Running tests

Running Rust tests

Run cargo test.

Running Python tests

Follow the instructions on compiling from source. Then you can run pytest.