export-to-csv | Export to CSV Mini Library
Small, simple and single purpose. Zero dependencies, functionally inspired and fairly well typed.
If you're looking for a fully CSV compliant, consistently maintained, whole-package library, I'd recommend looking elsewhere! (see alternatives section below)
If you want a lightweight, stable, easy-to-use basic CSV generation and download library, feel free to install.
Installation
npm install --save export-to-csv
Usage
This library was written with TypeScript in mind, so the examples will be in TS.
You can easily use this library in JavaScript as well. The bundle is using ES6 modules, which all modern browsers support.
You can also look at the integration tests for browser/JS use, and the unit tests to understand how the library functions.
In-browser
import { mkConfig, generateCsv, download } from "export-to-csv";
const csvConfig = mkConfig({ useKeysAsHeaders: true });
const mockData = [
{
name: "Rouky",
date: "2023-09-01",
percentage: 0.4,
quoted: '"Pickles"',
},
{
name: "Keiko",
date: "2023-09-01",
percentage: 0.9,
quoted: '"Cactus"',
},
];
const csv = generateCsv(csvConfig)(mockData);
const csvBtn = document.querySelector("#csv");
csvBtn.addEventListener("click", () => download(csvConfig)(csv));
Node.js
import { mkConfig, generateCsv, asString } from "./output/index.js";
import { writeFile } from "node:fs";
import { Buffer } from "node:buffer";
const csvConfig = mkConfig({ useKeysAsHeaders: true });
const mockData = [
{
name: "Rouky",
date: "2023-09-01",
percentage: 0.4,
quoted: '"Pickles"',
},
{
name: "Keiko",
date: "2023-09-01",
percentage: 0.9,
quoted: '"Cactus"',
},
];
const csv = generateCsv(csvConfig)(mockData);
const filename = `${csvConfig.filename}.csv`;
const csvBuffer = new Uint8Array(Buffer.from(asString(csv)));
writeFile(filename, csvBuffer, (err) => {
if (err) throw err;
console.log("file saved: ", filename);
});
API
Option | Default | Type | Description |
---|
fieldSeparator | "," | string | Defines the field separator character |
filename | "generated" | string | Sets the name of the file creates from the download function |
quoteStrings | false | boolean | Determines whether or not to quote strings (using quoteCharacter 's value). Whether or not this is set, \r , \n , and fieldSeparator will be quoted. |
quoteCharacter | '"' | string | Sets the quote character to use. |
decimalSeparator | "." | string | Defines the decimal separator character (default is .). If set to "locale", it uses the language sensitive representation of the number. |
showTitle | false | boolean | Sets whether or not to add the value of title to the start of the CSV. (This is not supported by all CSV readers) |
title | "My Generated Report" | string | The title to display as the first line of the CSV file. (This is not the name of the file [see filename ]) |
showColumnHeaders | true | boolean | Determines if columns should have headers. When set to false , the first row of the CSV will be data. |
columnHeaders | [] | Array<string> | Use this option if column/header order is important! Determines the headers to use as the first line of the CSV data. Items in the array must match key names of objects in your input collection. |
useKeysAsHeaders | false | boolean | If set, the CSV will use the key names in your collection as headers. Warning: headers recommended for large collections. If set, it'll override the headers option. Column/header order also not guaranteed. Use headers only if order is important! |
boolDisplay | {true: "TRUE", false: "FALSE"} | {true: string, false: string} | Determines how to display boolean values in the CSV. This only works for true and false . 1 and 0 will not be coerced and will display as 1 and 0 . |
useBom | true | boolean | Adds a byte order mark which is required by Excel to display CSVs, despite is not being necessary with UTF-8 🤷♂️ |
useTextFile | false | boolean | Will download the file as text/plain instead of text/csv and use a .txt vs .csv file-extension. |
Alternatives
As mentioned above, this library is intentionally small and was designed to solve a very simple need. It was not originally designed to be fully CSV compliant, so many things you need might be missing. I'm also not the most active on it (~7 year gap between updates). So, here are some alternatives with more support and that might be more fully featured.
Thanks!
This library was originally based off of this library by Javier Telio