EmailChecker

CSV Format

• Each record is one line - Line separator may be Carriage Return or Line Feed
  
• Fields are separated with delimiter (commas are best)
  
• Leading and trailing white spaces are ignored - Unless the field is delimited with double-quotes in that case the white space is preserved
  
• Embedded commas - Field must be delimited with double-quotes
  
• Embedded double-quotes - Embedded double-quote characters must be doubled, and the field must be delimited with double-quotes
  
• Embedded line-breaks - Fields must be surrounded by double-quotes

CSV Best Practice

A good CSV will look like this:

Organisation ID,Name,Email 1186,Fred,fred@domain.com 1187,George,george@domain.com

Resulting in a table like this:

 

Organisation ID	Name	Email
1186	Fred	fred@domain.com
1187	George	george@domain.com

 

The first row is a header row that contains the names for the columns (note that this row is not mandatory)

The remaining rows are data rows that always contain the same number of fields.

 

Line endings use CRLF (Windows line endings) and the column fields are separated by the delimiter (a comma).

If a field contains a comma, a line ending or quotes then the field should be wrapped by double quotes. For example: Springfield "Nuclear Power" Plant would need to be "Springfield ""Nuclear Power"" Plant"

OrganisationCode,OrganisationName,Address1,Address2,Address3,City,Postcode 0-23176921,"Springfield ""Nuclear Power"" Plant" ,Head Office,"HR House, 742 Evergreen Terrace",Washington,Springfield,PO BOX

which would result in a table like this:

OrganisationCode	OrganisationName	Address1	Address2	Address3	City	Postcode
0-23176921	Springfield "Nuclear Power" Plant	Head Office	HR House, 742 Evergreen Terrace	Washington	Springfield	PO BOX

Common CSV Errors

• There are encoding errors because of odd characters in the file (such as ć)
  
• Line breaks are not consistent
  
• Every row in the file must have the same number of columns
  
• Inconsistent use of quotation marks
  
• There shouldn't be any white spaces between commas and double quotes around fields