======
in2csv
======

Description
===========

Converts various tabular data formats into CSV.

Converting fixed width requires that you provide a schema file with the "-s" option. The schema file should have the following format:

.. code-block:: none

   column,start,length
   name,0,30
   birthday,30,10
   age,40,3

The header line is required though the columns may be in any order:

.. code-block:: none

   usage: in2csv [-h] [-d DELIMITER] [-t] [-q QUOTECHAR] [-u {0,1,2,3}] [-b]
                 [-p ESCAPECHAR] [-z FIELD_SIZE_LIMIT] [-e ENCODING] [-L LOCALE]
                 [-S] [--blanks] [--null-value NULL_VALUES [NULL_VALUES ...]]
                 [--date-format DATE_FORMAT] [--datetime-format DATETIME_FORMAT]
                 [-H] [-K SKIP_LINES] [-v] [-l] [--zero] [-V]
                 [-f {csv,dbf,fixed,geojson,json,ndjson,xls,xlsx}] [-s SCHEMA]
                 [-k KEY] [-n] [--sheet SHEET] [--write-sheets WRITE_SHEETS]
                 [--use-sheet-names] [--reset-dimensions]
                 [--encoding-xls ENCODING_XLS] [-y SNIFF_LIMIT] [-I]
                 [FILE]

   Convert common, but less awesome, tabular data formats to CSV.

   positional arguments:
     FILE                  The CSV file to operate on. If omitted, will accept
                           input as piped data via STDIN.

   optional arguments:
     -h, --help            show this help message and exit
     -f {csv,dbf,fixed,geojson,json,ndjson,xls,xlsx}, --format {csv,dbf,fixed,geojson,json,ndjson,xls,xlsx}
                           The format of the input file. If not specified will be
                           inferred from the file type.
     -s SCHEMA, --schema SCHEMA
                           Specify a CSV-formatted schema file for converting
                           fixed-width files. See web documentation.
     -k KEY, --key KEY     Specify a top-level key to look within for a list of
                           objects to be converted when processing JSON.
     -n, --names           Display sheet names from the input Excel file.
     --sheet SHEET         The name of the Excel sheet to operate on.
     --write-sheets WRITE_SHEETS
                           The names of the Excel sheets to write to files, or
                           "-" to write all sheets.
     --use-sheet-names     Use the sheet names as file names when --write-sheets
                           is set.
     --reset-dimensions    Ignore the sheet dimensions provided by the XLSX file.
     --encoding-xls ENCODING_XLS
                           Specify the encoding of the input XLS file.
     -y SNIFF_LIMIT, --snifflimit SNIFF_LIMIT
                           Limit CSV dialect sniffing to the specified number of
                           bytes. Specify "0" to disable sniffing.
     -I, --no-inference    Disable type inference (and --locale, --date-format,
                           --datetime-format) when parsing CSV input.

    Some command-line flags only pertain to specific input formats.

See also: :doc:`../common_arguments`.

.. note::

    The "ndjson" format refers to "newline delimited JSON", as used by many streaming APIs.

.. note::

    If an XLS looks identical to an XLSX when viewed in Excel, they may not be identical as CSV. For example, XLSX has an integer type, but XLS doesn't. Numbers that look like integers from an XLS will have decimals in CSV, but those from an XLSX won't.

.. note::

    To convert from HTML, consider `messytables <https://messytables.readthedocs.io/>`_.

Examples
========

Convert the 2000 census geo headers file from fixed-width to CSV and from latin-1 encoding to utf8:

.. code-block:: bash

   in2csv -e iso-8859-1 -f fixed -s examples/realdata/census_2000/census2000_geo_schema.csv examples/realdata/census_2000/usgeo_excerpt.upl

.. note::

    A library of fixed-width schemas is maintained in the ``ffs`` project:

    https://github.com/wireservice/ffs

Convert an Excel .xls file:

.. code-block:: bash

   in2csv examples/test.xls

Standardize the formatting of a CSV file (quoting, line endings, etc.):

.. code-block:: bash

   in2csv examples/realdata/FY09_EDU_Recipients_by_State.csv

Fetch csvkit's open issues from the GitHub API, convert the JSON response into a CSV and write it to a file:

.. code-block:: bash

   curl https://api.github.com/repos/wireservice/csvkit/issues?state=open | in2csv -f json -v

Convert a DBase DBF file to an equivalent CSV:

.. code-block:: bash

   in2csv examples/testdbf.dbf

This tool names unnamed headers. To avoid that behavior, run:

.. code-block:: bash

   in2csv --no-header-row examples/test.xlsx | tail -n +2

Troubleshooting
===============

If an error like the following occurs when providing an input file in CSV or Excel format:

.. code-block:: none

   ValueError: Row 0 has 11 values, but Table only has 1 columns.

Then the input file might have initial rows before the header and data rows. You can skip such rows with :code:`--skip-lines` (:code:`-K`):

.. code-block:: bash

   in2csv --skip-lines 3 examples/test_skip_lines.csv

If an XLSX file yields too few rows or too few columns, then the application that created the file might have `incorrectly set the worksheet's dimensions <https://openpyxl.readthedocs.io/en/stable/optimized.html#worksheet-dimensions>`__. Try again with the :code:`--reset-dimensions` option.
