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CSVJF-0.1.2
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 1 total dependent
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/ CSVJF

NAME

CSVJF - CSVJF (CSV with JSON Fields) file format specification

SPECIFICATION VERSION

0.1

VERSION

This document describes version 0.1.2 of CSVJF (from Perl distribution CSVJF), released on 2021-08-08.

STATUS

Draft series (0.x), might still change. Will be stable in 1.0.

ABSTRACT

CSVJF (short for "CSV with JSON field") is an extension to the CSV format to allow fields that contain JSON string, arrays, or hashes (objects).

NOTATION

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

RATIONALE

CSV is a convenient format to generate or write manually. However, it does not allow fields to be a data structure.

CSVJF extends the CSV specification as follows:

A CSV file is zero or more lines, separated by newlines. Each line represent a row of fields.

The first line may be a header line.

Each line is a comma-separated list of fields.

A field is either an unquoted string, a JSON-encoded string, a JSON-encoded array, or a JSON-encoded hash (object).

An unquoted string must not contain the record separator character (newline) or field separator character (comma). If the field wants to contain these characters it must be written as a JSON-encoded string. It also must not start with opening square bracket ("[") or opening curly brace ("{") because those characters are used for JSON array and hash, respectively.

A JSON-encoded string is string enclosed in double quotes ("). Escaping follows JSON rules.

A JSON-encoded array is string enclosed in square brackets ("[" and "]").

A JSON-encoded hash is string enclosed in curly braces ("{" and "}").

Some examples of CSVJF rows:

 one,two,three

 "field one with spaces","field two with
 newline and com,ma,s",field 3,["field5","array"],{"field6":"hash"}

HOMEPAGE

Please visit the project's homepage at https://metacpan.org/release/CSVJF.

SOURCE

Source repository is at https://github.com/perlancar/perl-CSVJF.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=CSVJF

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

SEE ALSO

CSVJ file format, https://csvj.org/. This file format attempts to standardize the CSV format with JSON rules. It's basically JSON array with the "[" and "]" square brackets removed (implied), with additional restriction of elements cannot be array/object. Thus, every string field must be quoted except when a field is a number, boolean true/false literal, or null. Note that despite the similar name, CSVJ and CSVJS are unrelated.

IOD format specification, IOD, which also employs the use of encoding prefixes ", [ and { to embed JSON string, array, and hash, respectively.

AUTHOR

perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2021, 2019 by perlancar@cpan.org.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.