Question

I have a csv file with this test content:

1,2,3
4,5,6
7,8,9

Parsing this in the usual manner with the csv module works fine:

>>> for row in csv.reader(open('test.csv')):
...     print row
... 
['1', '2', '3']
['4', '5', '6']
['7', '8', '9']

I then try and use the same process in a django view:

def upload_csv(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = ProductCSVUploadForm(request.POST, request.FILES)
        if form.is_valid():
            for row in csv.reader(request.FILES['csv_file'].read()):
                print row
    else:
        form = ProductCSVUploadForm()
    return render_to_response('upload_csv.html', locals())

This gives the output:

['1']
['', '']
['2']
['', '']
['3']
[]
['4']
['', '']
['5']
['', '']
['6']
[]
['7']
['', '']
['8']
['', '']
['9']
[]

Is Django changing the data? How can I stop this from happening?

Answer 1

Matt added to the top of the question:

Just after posting, the answer came to me: removing the .read(). Feel free to remove this moderators if you wish.

The reason for the problem is read returns a string, which gives characters when iterated over, while open produces a file object, which produces lines when iterated over.