Escaped quotes creating triple quotes

[robinwkurtz]

Hello! Great tool, thanks for sharing!

I'm having a small issue with escaped quotes.

Ideal output "HEADER1","HEADER2"
Resulting output """HEADER1""","""HEADER2""" or HEADER1,HEADER2

Tested code:
var headers = ['HEADER1', 'HEADER2'];
var headers = ['\"HEADER1\"', '\"HEADER2\"'];

Is there a way to specific an enclosing tag perhaps?

Thanks!

[cdhowie]

"" is how CSV escapes a double quote character, so encoding the JavaScript string '"HEADER1"' would be expected to produce """HEADER1""". This seems to be a case of bad input causing bad output.

[swilliams-cainc]

Looking for more of an explanation here. I have tried to following:

headers = ['HEADER1', 'HEADER2'] results in HEADER1,HEADER2
headers = ['"HEADER1"', '"HEADER2"'] results in """HEADER1""","""HEADER2"""
headers = ['"HEADER1"', '"HEADER2"'] results in """HEADER1""","""HEADER2"""
so what should my array be formatted as to result in: "HEADER1","HEADER2"

[cdhowie]

@willyts The CSV line HEADER1,HEADER2 is semantically equivalent to "HEADER1","HEADER2". Quotes are only needed to escape the characters ", ,, and newline.

[swilliams-cainc]

@cdhowie absolutely makes sense, however in this use case the processor that picks up these files expects that each field be double quoted to escape "this,stuff" so a comma can appear within a field.

Ex. "header1,test","header2" is not the same as header1,test,header2

[cdhowie]

If a field contains a comma, it will be escaped. For example, the input ['a', 'b,c', 'd'] would be expected to produce a,"b,c",d. (Only the second value needs escaping.)

Are you saying that the parser you have to emit for requires quotes on all fields? That would be a bit silly (though not unheard of).

[swilliams-cainc]

"Are you saying that the parser you have to emit for requires quotes on all fields? That would be a bit silly (though not unheard of)." yes :( unfortunately

[cdhowie]

Then I would suggest using another module that has an option to force quoting all fields for braindead parsers. csvwriter has such an option ({ quoteMode: 1 }).

[swilliams-cainc]

Thanks @cdhowie much appreciated!

[jshrek]

Was looking to do the exact same thing, by forcing double-quotes around each entry in each row.

csv-write-stream works great otherwise. I will check out csvwriter

Thanks

[nochums-payrix]

Possible patch for anyone looking for it:

Index: index.js
IDEA additional info:
Subsystem: com.intellij.openapi.diff.impl.patch.CharsetEP
<+>UTF-8
===================================================================
diff --git a/index.js b/index.js
--- a/index.js	(revision c817170d6b7812eb552da20fcbd5cb3a4012b9d1)
+++ b/index.js	(revision 6ab352301beca66300b54b450ffd9f38edd40c3f)
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
   this.headers = opts.headers || null
   this.separator = opts.separator || opts.seperator || ','
   this.newline = opts.newline || '\n'
+  this.forceQuote = opts.forceQuote || false
 
   this._objRow = null
   this._arrRow = null
@@ -22,6 +23,7 @@
 CsvWriteStream.prototype._compile = function(headers) {
   var newline = this.newline
   var sep = this.separator
+  var forceQuote = this.forceQuote;
   var str = 'function toRow(obj) {\n'
 
   if (!headers.length) str += '""'
@@ -31,18 +33,22 @@
     return 'a'+i
   })
 
-  for (var i = 0; i < headers.length; i += 500) { // do not overflowi the callstack on lots of cols
+  for (var i = 0; i < headers.length; i += 500) { // do not overflow the callstack on lots of cols
     var part = headers.length < 500 ? headers : headers.slice(i, i + 500)
     str += i ? 'result += "'+sep+'" + ' : 'var result = '
     part.forEach(function(prop, j) {
-      str += (j ? '+"'+sep+'"+' : '') + '(/['+sep+'\\r\\n"]/.test('+prop+') ? esc('+prop+'+"") : '+prop+')'
+      var nm = '(/['+sep+'\\r\\n"]/.test('+prop+') ? esc('+prop+'+"") : '+prop+')'
+      if (forceQuote) {
+        nm = '(/['+sep+'\\r\\n"]/.test('+prop+') ? esc('+prop+'+"") : quote('+prop+')+"")'
+      }
+      str += (j ? '+"'+sep+'"+' : '') + nm
     })
     str += '\n'
   }
 
   str += 'return result +'+JSON.stringify(newline)+'\n}'
 
-  return new Function('esc', 'return '+str)(esc)
+  return new Function('esc', 'quote', 'return '+str)(esc, quote)
 }
 
 CsvWriteStream.prototype._transform = function(row, enc, cb) {
@@ -97,3 +103,7 @@
 function esc(cell) {
   return '"'+cell.replace(/"/g, '""')+'"'
 }
+
+function quote(cell) {
+  return '"'+cell+'"'
+}