Read CSV file column by column

Question

I want to read specific columns from a multi column csv file and print those columns in other csv file using Java. Any help please? Following is my code to print each token line by line..But I am looking to print only few columns out of the multi column csv.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;

public class ParseCSV {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        try
        {

            //csv file containing data
            String strFile = "C:\\Users\\rsaluja\\CMS_Evaluation\\Drupal_12_08_27.csv";

            //create BufferedReader to read csv file
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new FileReader(strFile));
            String strLine = "";
            StringTokenizer st = null;
            int lineNumber = 0, tokenNumber = 0;

            //read comma separated file line by line
            while( (strLine = br.readLine()) != null)
            {
                lineNumber++;

                //break comma separated line using ","
                st = new StringTokenizer(strLine, ",");

                while(st.hasMoreTokens())
                {
                //display csv values
                tokenNumber++;
                System.out.println("Line # " + lineNumber +
                                ", Token # " + tokenNumber
                                + ", Token : "+ st.nextToken());


                            System.out.println(cols[4]);

Answer 1

You should use the excellent OpenCSV for reading and writing CSV files. To adapt your example to use the library it would look like this:

public class ParseCSV {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      //csv file containing data
      String strFile = "C:/Users/rsaluja/CMS_Evaluation/Drupal_12_08_27.csv";
      CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new FileReader(strFile));
      String [] nextLine;
      int lineNumber = 0;
      while ((nextLine = reader.readNext()) != null) {
        lineNumber++;
        System.out.println("Line # " + lineNumber);

        // nextLine[] is an array of values from the line
        System.out.println(nextLine[4] + "etc...");
      }
    }
  }
}

Answer 2

Reading a CSV file in very simple and common in Java. You actually don't require to load any extra third party library to do this for you. CSV (comma separated value) file is just a normal plain-text file, store data in column by column, and split it by a separator (e.g comma ",").

In order to read specific columns from the CSV file, there are several ways. Simplest of all is as below:

Code to read CSV without any 3rd party library

BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(csvFile));
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
    // use comma as separator
    String[] cols = line.split(cvsSplitBy);
    System.out.println("Coulmn 4= " + cols[4] + " , Column 5=" + cols[5]);
}

If you notice, nothing special is performed here. It is just reading a text file, and spitting it by a separator – ",".

Consider an extract from legacy country CSV data at GeoLite Free Downloadable Databases

"1.0.0.0","1.0.0.255","16777216","16777471","AU","Australia"
"1.0.1.0","1.0.3.255","16777472","16778239","CN","China"
"1.0.4.0","1.0.7.255","16778240","16779263","AU","Australia"
"1.0.8.0","1.0.15.255","16779264","16781311","CN","China"
"1.0.16.0","1.0.31.255","16781312","16785407","JP","Japan"
"1.0.32.0","1.0.63.255","16785408","16793599","CN","China"
"1.0.64.0","1.0.127.255","16793600","16809983","JP","Japan"
"1.0.128.0","1.0.255.255","16809984","16842751","TH","Thailand"

Above code will output as below:

Column 4= "AU" , Column 5="Australia"
Column 4= "CN" , Column 5="China"
Column 4= "AU" , Column 5="Australia"
Column 4= "CN" , Column 5="China"
Column 4= "JP" , Column 5="Japan"
Column 4= "CN" , Column 5="China"
Column 4= "JP" , Column 5="Japan"
Column 4= "TH" , Column 5="Thailand"

You can, in fact, put the columns in a Map and then get the values simply by using the key.

Shishir