Question

Is there a possibility to read the header of a CSV file white space and case insensitive? As for now I use csv.dictreader like this:

import csv
csvDict = csv.DictReader(open('csv-file.csv', 'rU'))

# determine column_A name
if 'column_A' in csvDict.fieldnames:
    column_A = 'column_A'
elif ' column_A' in csvDict.fieldnames:
    # extra space
    column_A = ' column_A'
elif 'Column_A' in csvDict.fieldnames:
    # capital A
    column_A = 'Column_A'

# get column_A data
for lineDict in csvDict:
    print(lineDict[column_A])

As you can see from the code, my csv files sometimes differ in extra white space or capital letters, for example

• “column_A”
• ” column_A”
• “Column_A”
• ” Column_A”
• …

I want to use something like this:

    column_A = ' Column_A'.strip().lower()
    print(lineDict[column_A])

Any ideas?

Answer 1

How about override DictReader.fieldnames property?

class MyDictReader(DictReader):

    @property
    def fieldnames(self):
        return [field.strip().lower() for field in super(MyDictReader, self).fieldnames]