This php function parses a CSV file and returns the data in a multidimensional array. I use it in many of my scripts and it works perfectly on all CSV files. So if you need a PHP CSV function that is simple and here for anyone to take, please use it.

I will post an example of its use later

PHP Code:

function importcsv($file, $head = false, $delim = ",", $len = 1000)
{

    $return = false;
    $handle = fopen($file, "r");
    if ($head)
    {
        $header = fgetcsv($handle, $len, $delim);
    }
    while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, $len, $delim)) !== false)
    {
        if ($head and isset($header))
        {
            foreach ($header as $key => $heading)
            {
                $row[$heading] = (isset($data[$key])) ? $data[$key] : '';
            }
            $return[] = $row;
        }
        else
        {
            $return[] = $data;
        }
    }
    fclose($handle);
    return $return;
} 


Now I do not take credit for writing this function, I found it somewhere. I cannot remember where I did and would give the developer full credit if I knew.

So let's say that your CSV file contents looked like this:

Code:

"ID","USERNAME","LASTNAME"
"00540000000wxjkAAA","heather@sportsrant.com","Simonds"
"00540000000wvEyAAI","simonds@sportsrant.com","Simonds"

So to test this, you could write a simple foreach () loop after passing this function your CSV file

PHP Code:

$file = 'extract.csv';

$data = importcsv($file, $head = true);
foreach ($data as $line)
{
    echo '<pre>' . print_r($line, true) . '</pre>';
}

exit; 


and your output would be something like this:

Code:

Array
(
    [ID] => 00540000000wxjkAAA
    [USERNAME] => heather@sportsrant.com
    [LASTNAME] => Simonds
)
Array
(
    [ID] => 00540000000wvEyAAI
    [USERNAME] => simonds@sportsrant.com
    [LASTNAME] => Simonds
)

This is really a great PHP snippet for parsing CSV files and extremely easy to use

Mike, I am just finishing up a project where I implemented a CSV importer that takes data from Eventbrite.com and imports it into custom objects in Salesforce. It's pretty slick and I used this function.

One important thing to note about it. It's not UTF-8 compliant. If you have double-byte characters in the data, it can cause problems. I Googled around for fixes and there were some suggestions about setting a locale and the like, but nothing worked.

It's a great function, but that's a caveat to it.

Yeah Scott I did notice that problem too when I was writing a series of scripts that process a system like you built kind of like that. I found a way around that though:

PHP Code:

foreach ($data as $key => $value)
{
    $data[$key] = utf8_encode($value);
} 


I am sure that you already know of the utf8_encode function, but I was getting API errors back from salesforce on some of my inserts and added this and the errors went away

I am also going to email you a little script that may help you out

~Mike