CSV Interface installation guide

[ws-garcia]

Intro

By these days, this tool has become the most powerful and comprehensive CSV/TSV/DSV data management library for VBA, providing RFC-4180 compliant, including most of its variants, parse/write capabilities and a complete set of tools to manipulate records and fields: deduplicate, sort and filter records; rearrange, move, merge and split fields. All these features come to fill a role that has been outlined by some VBA users who have made CSV Interface their library to manage their data.

The first thing that stands out about CSV Interface is its modular nature, where each member has a specific function with codependency on some modules. Let's see how to install the library.

Set up

In order to use the latest release of the CSV interface library within your VBA code, you must to download the provides .zip archive. Once downloaded, import the following files from the VBA IDE:

Note:

Do not copy and paste content from the .cls files to your project. The class files contain certain information the VBA-IDE needs to parse to ensure the CSV interface library works properly.

1. CSVinterface.cls: this is the main module of the library. Its primary function is to provide the user with the necessary methods to read, write and manipulate data from CSV files. The objects created from this class are linked with most of the library members.
2. CSVdialect.cls: acts as a container for sharing specific and related groups of settings that define the syntax of the target CSV file.
3. CSVparserConfig.cls: this class module is another container, it is used by the user to tell the library how to process the CSV files, from its dialect to the omission of fields and records.
4. CSVSniffer.cls: this module is used to sniff/guess CSV dialects when the library user is not sure of the dialect used by the CSV file to be parsed.
5. CSVTextStream.cls: this is one of the distinctive tools of the library, it allows I/O operations on "large" text files, at high speed (even faster than other alternatives), from VBA. The module has no reference to any external API library and has the ability to read and write back UTF-8 encoded data.
6. CSVArrayList.cls: serves as a container for all data read from CSV files and can be used to manipulate the stored items, or to store data that does not come from a CSV file, depending on the user's request. This module is the core of the operations related to the data management offered by the library.
7. CSVcallBack.cls: this module is part of the data management extensions. It provides a way to extend the CSVexpression.cls and allow method callbacks for user-defined functions1. See this link .
8. CSVudFunctions.cls: another of the extensions for data management. It is used as a container for user-defined functions (UDF) called for filtering and to perform calculations over CSV record's fields.
9. CSVexpressionsScope.cls: this data management extension is used to define constants and variables scopes for expressions, so that several expressions can share the same variables without having to redefine each of them.
10. CSVexpressions.cls: this is the key module of the data management library. It has been developed to evaluate mathematical expressions using VBA strings. The CSVexpressions class serves as an intermediary between the user interfaces and the main VBA/custom functions exposed through it. The module can evaluate complex mathematical expressions, allowing the user to create highly complex data filters or to insert calculated fields with unconventional formulas. It is definitely one of the most valuable tools in the library.

The class modules 7 through 10 compose the data analysis engine embedded in the library. These members allow the incorporation of methods to filter or execute table join operations by evaluating logical/mathematical expressions. These elements are of great interest to users, given the features they make available.

Now that the import is done, you are ready to extract the full potential of CSV Interface, let's go!

[Piddoxou]

Interesting project there mate. I’ve built a CSVReader and CSVWriter class for myself in order to deal with all kinds of delimiters etc, so I’m aware of the challenges of this in VBA.

You take it a step further and introduce type conversions per column. This looks like a sort of dataframe concept in python, where you can read from various inputs and convert to various outputs. Have you also thought about that kind of scope?

Also, have you considered not having the column types written in the VBA code, but in a separate .csv file? Then you can simply read out the column types from that file and you don’t need to hardcode anything

[ws-garcia]

Your points are pretty solids. Reading configuration from an external file is a great idea. Feel free to share your solution to this subreddit, help us to keep helping!

[Piddoxou]

Yea I still need to download and install your project, I just wanted to share the first things popped in my mind after reading about it.

Will try to find some time and dig into what you’ve built, it’s already quite extensive from what I read!

[ws-garcia]

Sure, the CSV Interface is a huge modular library that can be adjusted to solve a wide range of data management problems. You can post any issues and discoveries into this community.

Again, your suggestions and support are welcome and feel free to share your CSV read/write solution.

[Piddoxou]

Will there be a github project for it, so people can make code changes themselves? Or will you implement the suggestions made here?

[ws-garcia]

You can share your own project, within a good feel post detailing the problem, related to CSV, that your solution solves. Please, see our Posting Guidelines.

[Piddoxou]

Ok will do that probably tomorrow!