Question

I have a csv file that contains a “location” field. I need to import this field into Drupal with node import, but I have to import the address field into different fields. One for “postal code”, another for “street” etc.

The “location” field contains the whole address with a ‘|’ delimiter in between – like this: “street street no | postal code city”

How would I best change the csv file before I import it? I only have experience with php, and I don’t know much about perl or python scripts, but I have a hunch that it would be best to write a script that can parse the csv file and change the “location” field into new fields.

Is that about right? I would be grateful for some suggestions as to where I should start – thanks a lot

Answer 1

You don’t give an example line. You might have trouble if you don’t know Perl.
In general, there are good Csv modules on CPAN, this may be needed to discerne embedded
field delimeter char(s) within the field itself. Otherwise, read in the file line by line,
modify the line then write it out to a new file. Something like this (untested) ..

use strict;
use warnings;

open my $infile,  '<', 'filein.csv'  or die "error opening infile $!";
open my $outfile, '>', 'fileout.csv' or die "error opening outfile $!";

while (<$infile>) {
   my @fields = split /,|\|/, $_;
   print $outfile join(',', @fields), "\n";
}
close $outfile;
close $infile;