Provided by: libdbd-csv-perl_0.4100-1_all bug

NAME

       DBD::CSV - DBI driver for CSV files

SYNOPSIS

           use DBI;
           # See "Creating database handle" below
           $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:") or
               die "Cannot connect: $DBI::errstr";

           # Simple statements
           $dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE a (id INTEGER, name CHAR (10))") or
               die "Cannot prepare: " . $dbh->errstr ();

           # Selecting
           $dbh->{RaiseError} = 1;
           my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("select * from foo");
           $sth->execute;
           while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array) {
               print "id: $row[0], name: $row[1]\n";
               }

           # Updates
           my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("UPDATE a SET name = ? WHERE id = ?");
           $sth->execute ("DBI rocks!", 1);
           $sth->finish;

           $dbh->disconnect;

DESCRIPTION

       The DBD::CSV module is yet another driver for the DBI (Database independent interface for
       Perl). This one is based on the SQL "engine" SQL::Statement and the abstract DBI driver
       DBD::File and implements access to so-called CSV files (Comma Separated Values). Such
       files are often used for exporting MS Access and MS Excel data.

       See DBI for details on DBI, SQL::Statement for details on SQL::Statement and DBD::File for
       details on the base class DBD::File.

   Prerequisites
       The only system dependent feature that DBD::File uses, is the "flock ()" function. Thus
       the module should run (in theory) on any system with a working "flock ()", in particular
       on all Unix machines and on Windows NT. Under Windows 95 and MacOS the use of "flock ()"
       is disabled, thus the module should still be usable.

       Unlike other DBI drivers, you don't need an external SQL engine or a running server. All
       you need are the following Perl modules, available from any CPAN mirror, for example

         http://search.cpan.org/

       DBI A recent version of the DBI (Database independent interface for Perl).  See below why.

       DBD::File
           This is the base class for DBD::CSV, and it is part of the DBI distribution. As
           DBD::CSV requires a matching version of DBD::File which is (partly) developed by the
           same team that maintains DBD::CSV. See META.json or Makefile.PL for the minimum
           versions.

       SQL::Statement
           A simple SQL engine. This module defines all of the SQL syntax for DBD::CSV, new SQL
           support is added with each release so you should look for updates to SQL::Statement
           regularly.

           It is possible to run "DBD::CSV" without this module if you define the environment
           variable $DBI_SQL_NANO to 1. This will reduce the SQL support a lot though. See
           DBI::SQL::Nano for more details. Note that the test suite does only test in this mode
           in the development environment.

       Text::CSV_XS
           This module is used to read and write rows in a CSV file.

   Installation
       Installing this module (and the prerequisites from above) is quite simple.  The simplest
       way is to install the bundle:

           $ cpan Bundle::CSV

       Alternatively, you can name them all

           $ cpan Text::CSV_XS DBI DBD::CSV

       or even trust "cpan" to resolve all dependencies for you:

           $ cpan DBD::CSV

       If you cannot, for whatever reason, use cpan, fetch all modules from CPAN, and build with
       a sequence like:

           gzip -d < DBD-CSV-0.40.tgz | tar xf -

       (this is for Unix users, Windows users would prefer WinZip or something similar) and then
       enter the following:

           cd DBD-CSV-0.40
           perl Makefile.PL
           make test

       If any tests fail, let us know. Otherwise go on with

           make install UNINST=1

       Note that you almost definitely need root or administrator permissions.  If you don't have
       them, read the ExtUtils::MakeMaker man page for details on installing in your own
       directories. ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

   Supported SQL Syntax
       All SQL processing for DBD::CSV is done by SQL::Statement. See SQL::Statement for more
       specific information about its feature set.  Features include joins, aliases, built-in and
       user-defined functions, and more.  See SQL::Statement::Syntax for a description of the SQL
       syntax supported in DBD::CSV.

       Table- and column-names are case insensitive unless quoted. Column names will be sanitized
       unless "raw_header" is true;

Using DBD::CSV with DBI

       For most things, DBD-CSV operates the same as any DBI driver.  See DBI for detailed usage.

   Creating a database handle (connect)
       Creating a database handle usually implies connecting to a database server.  Thus this
       command reads

           use DBI;
           my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
               f_dir => "/home/user/folder",
               });

       The directory tells the driver where it should create or open tables (a.k.a.  files). It
       defaults to the current directory, so the following are equivalent:

           $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:");
           $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, { f_dir => "." });
           $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:f_dir=.");

       We were told, that VMS might - for whatever reason - require:

           $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:f_dir=");

       The preferred way of passing the arguments is by driver attributes:

           # specify most possible flags via driver flags
           $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
               f_schema         => undef,
               f_dir            => "data",
               f_dir_search     => [],
               f_ext            => ".csv/r",
               f_lock           => 2,
               f_encoding       => "utf8",

               csv_eol          => "\r\n",
               csv_sep_char     => ",",
               csv_quote_char   => '"',
               csv_escape_char  => '"',
               csv_class        => "Text::CSV_XS",
               csv_null         => 1,
               csv_tables       => {
                   info => { f_file => "info.csv" }
                   },

               RaiseError       => 1,
               PrintError       => 1,
               FetchHashKeyName => "NAME_lc",
               }) or die $DBI::errstr;

       but you may set these attributes in the DSN as well, separated by semicolons.  Pay
       attention to the semi-colon for "csv_sep_char" (as seen in many CSV exports from MS Excel)
       is being escaped in below example, as is would otherwise be seen as attribute separator:

           $dbh = DBI->connect (
               "dbi:CSV:f_dir=$ENV{HOME}/csvdb;f_ext=.csv;f_lock=2;" .
               "f_encoding=utf8;csv_eol=\n;csv_sep_char=\\;;" .
               "csv_quote_char=\";csv_escape_char=\\;csv_class=Text::CSV_XS;" .
               "csv_null=1") or die $DBI::errstr;

       Using attributes in the DSN is easier to use when the DSN is derived from an outside
       source (environment variable, database entry, or configure file), whereas specifying
       entries in the attribute hash is easier to read and to maintain.

   Creating and dropping tables
       You can create and drop tables with commands like the following:

           $dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE $table (id INTEGER, name CHAR (64))");
           $dbh->do ("DROP TABLE $table");

       Note that currently only the column names will be stored and no other data.  Thus all
       other information including column type (INTEGER or CHAR (x), for example), column
       attributes (NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY, ...) will silently be discarded. This may change in a
       later release.

       A drop just removes the file without any warning.

       See DBI for more details.

       Table names cannot be arbitrary, due to restrictions of the SQL syntax.  I recommend that
       table names are valid SQL identifiers: The first character is alphabetic, followed by an
       arbitrary number of alphanumeric characters. If you want to use other files, the file
       names must start with "/", "./" or "../" and they must not contain white space.

   Inserting, fetching and modifying data
       The following examples insert some data in a table and fetch it back: First, an example
       where the column data is concatenated in the SQL string:

           $dbh->do ("INSERT INTO $table VALUES (1, ".
                      $dbh->quote ("foobar") . ")");

       Note the use of the quote method for escaping the word "foobar". Any string must be
       escaped, even if it does not contain binary data.

       Next, an example using parameters:

           $dbh->do ("INSERT INTO $table VALUES (?, ?)", undef, 2,
                     "It's a string!");

       Note that you don't need to quote column data passed as parameters.  This version is
       particularly well designed for loops. Whenever performance is an issue, I recommend using
       this method.

       You might wonder about the "undef". Don't wonder, just take it as it is. :-) It's an
       attribute argument that I have never used and will be passed to the prepare method as the
       second argument.

       To retrieve data, you can use the following:

           my $query = "SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id > 1 ORDER BY id";
           my $sth   = $dbh->prepare ($query);
           $sth->execute ();
           while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
               print "Found result row: id = ", $row->{id},
                     ", name = ", $row->{name};
               }
           $sth->finish ();

       Again, column binding works: The same example again.

           my $sth = $dbh->prepare (qq;
               SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id > 1 ORDER BY id;
               ;);
           $sth->execute;
           my ($id, $name);
           $sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
           while ($sth->fetch) {
               print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
               }
           $sth->finish;

       Of course you can even use input parameters. Here's the same example for the third time:

           my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?");
           $sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
           for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
               $sth->execute ($id);
               if ($sth->fetch) {
                   print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
                   }
               $sth->finish;
               }

       See DBI for details on these methods. See SQL::Statement for details on the WHERE clause.

       Data rows are modified with the UPDATE statement:

           $dbh->do ("UPDATE $table SET id = 3 WHERE id = 1");

       Likewise you use the DELETE statement for removing rows:

           $dbh->do ("DELETE FROM $table WHERE id > 1");

   Error handling
       In the above examples we have never cared about return codes. Of course, this is not
       recommended. Instead we should have written (for example):

           my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?") or
               die "prepare: " . $dbh->errstr ();
           $sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name) or
               die "bind_columns: " . $dbh->errstr ();
           for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
               $sth->execute ($id) or
                   die "execute: " . $dbh->errstr ();
               $sth->fetch and
                   print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
               }
           $sth->finish ($id) or die "finish: " . $dbh->errstr ();

       Obviously this is tedious. Fortunately we have DBI's RaiseError attribute:

           $dbh->{RaiseError} = 1;
           $@ = "";
           eval {
               my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?");
               $sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
               for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
                   $sth->execute ($id);
                   $sth->fetch and
                       print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
                   }
               $sth->finish ($id);
               };
           $@ and die "SQL database error: $@";

       This is not only shorter, it even works when using DBI methods within subroutines.

DBI database handle attributes

   Metadata
       The following attributes are handled by DBI itself and not by DBD::File, thus they all
       work as expected:

           Active
           ActiveKids
           CachedKids
           CompatMode             (Not used)
           InactiveDestroy
           Kids
           PrintError
           RaiseError
           Warn                   (Not used)

       The following DBI attributes are handled by DBD::File:

       AutoCommit
           Always on

       ChopBlanks
           Works

       NUM_OF_FIELDS
           Valid after "$sth->execute"

       NUM_OF_PARAMS
           Valid after "$sth->prepare"

       NAME
       NAME_lc
       NAME_uc
           Valid after "$sth->execute"; undef for Non-Select statements.

       NULLABLE
           Not really working. Always returns an array ref of one's, as DBD::CSV does not verify
           input data. Valid after "$sth->execute"; undef for non-Select statements.

       These attributes and methods are not supported:

           bind_param_inout
           CursorName
           LongReadLen
           LongTruncOk

DBD-CSV specific database handle attributes

       In addition to the DBI attributes, you can use the following dbh attributes:

   DBD::File attributes
       f_dir
           This attribute is used for setting the directory where CSV files are opened. Usually
           you set it in the dbh and it defaults to the current directory ("."). However, it may
           be overridden in statement handles.

       f_dir_search
           This attribute optionally defines a list of extra directories to search when opening
           existing tables. It should be an anonymous list or an array reference listing all
           folders where tables could be found.

               my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
                   f_dir        => "data",
                   f_dir_search => [ "ref/data", "ref/old" ],
                   f_ext        => ".csv/r",
                   }) or die $DBI::errstr;

       f_ext
           This attribute is used for setting the file extension.

       f_schema
           This attribute allows you to set the database schema name. The default is to use the
           owner of "f_dir". "undef" is allowed, but not in the DSN part.

               my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
                   f_schema => undef,
                   f_dir    => "data",
                   f_ext    => ".csv/r",
                   }) or die $DBI::errstr;

       f_encoding
           This attribute allows you to set the encoding of the data. With CSV, it is not
           possible to set (and remember) the encoding on a column basis, but DBD::File now
           allows the encoding to be set on the underlying file. If this attribute is not set, or
           undef is passed, the file will be seen as binary.

       f_lock
           With this attribute you can specify a locking mode to be used (if locking is supported
           at all) for opening tables. By default, tables are opened with a shared lock for
           reading, and with an exclusive lock for writing. The supported modes are:

           0 Force no locking at all.

           1 Only shared locks will be used.

           2 Only exclusive locks will be used.

       But see "KNOWN BUGS" in DBD::File.

   DBD::CSV specific attributes
       csv_class
           The attribute csv_class controls the CSV parsing engine. This defaults to
           "Text::CSV_XS", but "Text::CSV" can be used in some cases, too.  Please be aware that
           "Text::CSV" does not care about any edge case as "Text::CSV_XS" does and that
           "Text::CSV" is probably about 100 times slower than "Text::CSV_XS".

   Text::CSV_XS specific attributes
       csv_eol
       csv_sep_char
       csv_quote_char
       csv_escape_char
       csv_csv
           The attributes csv_eol, csv_sep_char, csv_quote_char and csv_escape_char are
           corresponding to the respective attributes of the csv_class (usually Text::CSV_CS)
           object. You may want to set these attributes if you have unusual CSV files like
           /etc/passwd or MS Excel generated CSV files with a semicolon as separator. Defaults
           are "\015\012", ';', '"' and '"', respectively.

           The csv_eol attribute defines the end-of-line pattern, which is better known as a
           record separator pattern since it separates records.  The default is windows-style
           end-of-lines "\015\012" for output (writing) and unset for input (reading), so if on
           unix you may want to set this to newline ("\n") like this:

             $dbh->{csv_eol} = "\n";

           It is also possible to use multi-character patterns as record separators.  For example
           this file uses newlines as field separators (sep_char) and the pattern
           "\n__ENDREC__\n" as the record separators (eol):

             name
             city
             __ENDREC__
             joe
             seattle
             __ENDREC__
             sue
             portland
             __ENDREC__

           To handle this file, you'd do this:

             $dbh->{eol}      = "\n__ENDREC__\n" ,
             $dbh->{sep_char} = "\n"

           The attributes are used to create an instance of the class csv_class, by default
           Text::CSV_XS. Alternatively you may pass an instance as csv_csv, the latter takes
           precedence. Note that the binary attribute must be set to a true value in that case.

           Additionally you may overwrite these attributes on a per-table base in the csv_tables
           attribute.

       csv_null
           With this option set, all new statement handles will set "always_quote" and
           "blank_is_undef" in the CSV parser and writer, so it knows how to distinguish between
           the empty string and "undef" or "NULL". You cannot reset it with a false value. You
           can pass it to connect, or set it later:

             $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", { csv_null => 1 });

             $dbh->{csv_null} = 1;

       csv_tables
           This hash ref is used for storing table dependent metadata. For any table it contains
           an element with the table name as key and another hash ref with the following
           attributes:

       csv_*
           All other attributes that start with "csv_" and are not described above will be passed
           to "Text::CSV_XS" (without the "csv_" prefix). These extra options are only likely to
           be useful for reading (select) handles. Examples:

             $dbh->{csv_allow_whitespace}    = 1;
             $dbh->{csv_allow_loose_quotes}  = 1;
             $dbh->{csv_allow_loose_escapes} = 1;

           See the "Text::CSV_XS" documentation for the full list and the documentation.

   Driver specific attributes
       f_file
           The name of the file used for the table; defaults to

               "$dbh->{f_dir}/$table"

       eol
       sep_char
       quote_char
       escape_char
       class
       csv These correspond to the attributes csv_eol, csv_sep_char, csv_quote_char,
           csv_escape_char, csv_class and csv_csv.  The difference is that they work on a per-
           table basis.

       col_names
       skip_first_row
           By default DBD::CSV assumes that column names are stored in the first row of the CSV
           file and sanitizes them (see "raw_header" below). If this is not the case, you can
           supply an array ref of table names with the col_names attribute. In that case the
           attribute skip_first_row will be set to FALSE.

           If you supply an empty array ref, the driver will read the first row for you, count
           the number of columns and create column names like "col0", "col1", ...

       raw_header
           Due to the SQL standard, field names cannot contain special characters like a dot
           (".") or a space (" ") unless the column names are quoted.  Following the approach of
           mdb_tools, all these tokens are translated to an underscore ("_") when reading the
           first line of the CSV file, so all field names are 'sanitized'. If you do not want
           this to happen, set "raw_header" to a true value and the entries in the first line of
           the CSV data will be used verbatim for column headers and field names.  DBD::CSV
           cannot guarantee that any part in the toolchain will work if field names have those
           characters, and the chances are high that the SQL statements will fail.

       It's strongly recommended to check the attributes supported by "Metadata" in DBD::File.

       Example: Suppose you want to use /etc/passwd as a CSV file. :-) There simplest way is:

           use DBI;
           my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
               f_dir           => "/etc",
               csv_sep_char    => ":",
               csv_quote_char  => undef,
               csv_escape_char => undef,
               });
           $dbh->{csv_tables}{passwd} = {
               col_names => [qw( login password uid gid realname
                                 directory shell )];
               };
           $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM passwd");

       Another possibility where you leave all the defaults as they are and override them on a
       per table basis:

           require DBI;
           my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:");
           $dbh->{csv_tables}{passwd} = {
               eol         => "\n",
               sep_char    => ":",
               quote_char  => undef,
               escape_char => undef,
               f_file      => "/etc/passwd",
               col_names   => [qw( login password uid gid
                                   realname directory shell )],
               };
           $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM passwd");

   Driver private methods
       These methods are inherited from DBD::File:

       data_sources
           The "data_sources" method returns a list of sub-directories of the current directory
           in the form "dbi:CSV:directory=$dirname".

           If you want to read the sub-directories of another directory, use

               my $drh  = DBI->install_driver ("CSV");
               my @list = $drh->data_sources (f_dir => "/usr/local/csv_data");

       list_tables
           This method returns a list of file-names inside $dbh->{directory}.  Example:

               my $dbh  = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:directory=/usr/local/csv_data");
               my @list = $dbh->func ("list_tables");

           Note that the list includes all files contained in the directory, even those that have
           non-valid table names, from the view of SQL. See "Creating and dropping tables" above.

KNOWN ISSUES

       ยท   The module is using flock () internally. However, this function is not available on
           some platforms. Use of flock () is disabled on MacOS and Windows 95: There's no
           locking at all (perhaps not so important on these operating systems, as they are for
           single users anyways).

TODO

       Tests
           Aim for a full 100% code coverage

            - eol      Make tests for different record separators.
            - csv_xs   Test with a variety of combinations for
                       sep_char, quote_char, and escape_char testing
            - quoting  $dbh->do ("drop table $_") for DBI-tables ();
            - errors   Make sure that all documented exceptions are tested.
                       . write to write-protected file
                       . read from badly formatted csv
                       . pass bad arguments to csv parser while fetching

           Add tests that specifically test DBD::File functionality where that is useful.

       RT  Attack all open DBD::CSV bugs in RT

       CPAN::Forum
           Attack all items in http://www.cpanforum.com/dist/DBD-CSV

       Documentation
           Expand on error-handling, and document all possible errors.  Use
           Text::CSV_XS::error_diag () wherever possible.

       Debugging
           Implement and document dbd_verbose.

       Data dictionary
           Investigate the possibility to store the data dictionary in a file like .sys$columns
           that can store the field attributes (type, key, nullable).

       Examples
           Make more real-life examples from the docs in examples/

SEE ALSO

       DBI, Text::CSV_XS, SQL::Statement, DBI::SQL::Nano

       For help on the use of DBD::CSV, see the DBI users mailing list:

         http://lists.cpan.org/showlist.cgi?name=dbi-users

       For general information on DBI see

         http://dbi.perl.org/ and http://faq.dbi-support.com/

AUTHORS and MAINTAINERS

       This module is currently maintained by

           H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>

       in close cooperation with and help from

           Jens Rehsack <sno@NetBSD.org>

       The original author is Jochen Wiedmann.  Previous maintainer was Jeff Zucker

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 2009-2013 by H.Merijn Brand Copyright (C) 2004-2009 by Jeff Zucker Copyright
       (C) 1998-2004 by Jochen Wiedmann

       All rights reserved.

       You may distribute this module under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or
       the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.