csv-stringify

What is csv-stringify?

The csv-stringify npm package is a module that provides the ability to convert arrays or objects into a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) string. It can be used to generate CSV files or strings from JavaScript data structures, supporting both the Node.js stream API and a simple callback-based API.

What are csv-stringify's main functionalities?

Stringifying an array of records

This feature allows you to convert an array of arrays (representing records) into a CSV string. Each sub-array is a row in the CSV output.

const stringify = require('csv-stringify');
const records = [['1', '2', '3'], ['a', 'b', 'c']];
stringify(records, (err, output) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(output);
});

Stringifying from a stream

This feature demonstrates how to use csv-stringify with Node.js streams. Data can be piped into the stringify function, which then outputs a CSV formatted stream.

const stringify = require('csv-stringify');
const { Readable } = require('stream');
const records = new Readable({
  objectMode: true,
  read() {}
});
records.push(['1', '2', '3']);
records.push(['a', 'b', 'c']);
records.push(null);
records.pipe(stringify()).pipe(process.stdout);

Stringifying objects with column headers

This feature allows you to convert an array of objects into a CSV string, including column headers as the first row in the output.

const stringify = require('csv-stringify');
const records = [{ id: '1', name: 'John Doe' }, { id: '2', name: 'Jane Doe' }];
stringify(records, { header: true }, (err, output) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(output);
});

Other packages similar to csv-stringify

papaparse

PapaParse is a robust and powerful CSV (character-separated values) parser with a focus on ease of use and performance. It can parse CSV files or strings, convert them to JSON, and provide many advanced features like auto-detection of delimiters. Compared to csv-stringify, PapaParse offers both parsing and stringifying capabilities, whereas csv-stringify is focused only on stringifying.

fast-csv

fast-csv is an npm package that provides parsing and formatting capabilities for CSV data. It is designed to be fast and flexible, allowing for both stream and callback-based APIs. While csv-stringify is specifically for stringifying JavaScript data into CSV format, fast-csv offers both parsing and formatting, making it a more comprehensive solution for working with CSV data.

README

Part of the [CSV module][csv_home], this project is a stringifier converting arrays or objects input into a CSV text. It implements the Node.js [stream.Transform API][stream_transform]. It also provides a simple callback-based API for convenience. It is both extremely easy to use and powerful. It was first released in 2010 and is used against big data sets by a large community.

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

Features

• Follow the Node.js streaming API
• Simplicity with the optional callback API
• Support for custom formatters, delimiters, quotes, escape characters and header
• Support big datasets
• Complete test coverage and samples for inspiration
• no external dependencies
• to be used conjointly with csv-generate, csv-parse and stream-transform
• BSD License

Usage

Refer to the project webpage for an exhaustive list of options and some usage examples.

The module is built on the Node.js Stream API. For the sake of simplify, a simple callback API is also provided. To give you a quick look, here's an example of the callback API:

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

input = [ [ '1', '2', '3', '4' ], [ 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd' ] ];
stringify(input, function(err, output){
  output.should.eql('1,2,3,4\na,b,c,d');
});

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 0.10, 0.11 and 0.12 of Node.js.

Contributors

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