csv-generate

What is csv-generate?

The csv-generate package is a simple and powerful tool for generating CSV data programmatically. It is part of the CSV module suite for Node.js, designed to work with streams and provide a flexible means of generating CSV files with custom settings. This package can be particularly useful for testing, data generation, and simulation purposes.

What are csv-generate's main functionalities?

Synchronous Data Generation

Generate CSV data synchronously. This is useful for small datasets that can be generated and used on the fly without the need for asynchronous handling.

const generate = require('csv-generate');
let output = generate({length: 2});
console.log(output);

Asynchronous Stream Generation

Generate CSV data asynchronously using streams. This method is suitable for larger datasets or when the data generation process is part of a larger, asynchronous workflow.

const generate = require('csv-generate');
const generator = generate({length: 20, objectMode: true});
generator.on('readable', function(){
  let row;
  while ((row = generator.read()) !== null) {
    console.log(row);
  }
});

Custom Column Options

Customize the columns of the generated CSV data. This feature allows for specifying the type of data each column should contain, providing flexibility in the structure of the generated data.

const generate = require('csv-generate');
const output = generate({columns: ['int', 'bool'], length: 2});
console.log(output);

Other packages similar to csv-generate

csv-write-stream

A Node.js module for generating CSV files with a simple API. It differs from csv-generate by focusing more on the output stream aspect, allowing for easy writing of CSV data to files or other destinations.

fast-csv

This package provides comprehensive CSV parsing and formatting capabilities. While it includes functionality for generating CSV data, it also offers extensive support for parsing, transforming, and formatting CSV data, making it a more versatile choice compared to csv-generate.

README

CSV and object generation

This package provides a flexible generator of CSV strings and Javascript objects implementing the Node.js stream.Readable API.

Documentation for the "csv-generate" package is available here.

Features includes:

• random or pseudo-random seed based generation
• stream.Readable implementation
• BSD License

Usage

Run npm install csv to install the full csv module or run npm install csv-generate if you are only interested by the CSV generator.

Use the callback style API for simplicity or the stream based API for scalability.

Using the callback API

The parser receive a string and return an array inside a user-provided callback. This example is available with the command node samples/callback.js.

var generate = require('csv-generate');

generate({seed: 1, columns: 2, length: 2}, function(err, output){
  output.should.eql('OMH,ONKCHhJmjadoA\nD,GeACHiN');
});

Using the stream API

// node samples/stream.js
var generate = require('csv-generate');

var data = []
var generator = generate({seed: 1, objectMode: true, columns: 2, length: 2});
generator.on('readable', function(){
  while(d = generator.read()){
    data.push(d);
  }
});
generator.on('error', function(err){
  console.log(err);
});
generator.on('end', function(){
  data.should.eql([ [ 'OMH', 'ONKCHhJmjadoA' ],[ 'D', 'GeACHiN' ] ]);
});

Using the pipe function

One usefull function part of the Stream API is pipe to interact between multiple streams. You may use this function to pipe a stream.Readable string source to a stream.Writable object destination. The next example available as node samples/pipe.js read the file, parse its content and transform it.

// node samples/pipe.js
var generate = require('csv-generate');

var generator = generate({columns: ['int', 'bool'], length: 2});
generator.pipe(process.stdout);

Migration

Most of the generator is imported from its parent project CSV in a effort to split it between the generator, the parser, the transformer and the stringifier.

Development

Tests are executed with mocha. To install it, simple run npm install followed by npm test. It will install mocha and its dependencies in your project "node_modules" directory and run the test suite. The tests run against the CoffeeScript source files.

To generate the JavaScript files, run npm run coffee.

The test suite is run online with Travis against the versions 0.9, 0.10 and 0.11 of Node.js.

Contributors

• David Worms: https://github.com/wdavidw