Question

I am trying to import data into rails (3.1) and I have created this rake task to parse a CSV file (generated by Excel on Mac)

 desc "Import users." 
  task :import_users => :environment do
    File.open("users.csv", "r").each do |line|
      id, name, age, email = line.strip.split(',')
      u = User.new(:id => id, :name => name, :age => age, :email => email)
      u.save
    end
  end

However when I run the rake task, only the first line of the CSV file gets imported. It does not iterate over every line in the file besides the first one. Can anyone tell me why?

Answer 1

When parsing any kind of text file using ruby, be sure to check encoding and/or line endings to make sure it’s a format that Ruby likes.

In this case, Ruby disliked the Mac OS X line ending format, but liked the Unix one.