Parse CSV file with header fields as attributes for each row

Question

I would like to parse a CSV file so that each row is treated like an object with the header-row being the names of the attributes in the object. I could write this, but I'm sure its already out there.

Here is my CSV input:

"foo","bar","baz"
1,2,3
"blah",7,"blam"
4,5,6

The code would look something like this:

CSV.open('my_file.csv','r') do |csv_obj|
  puts csv_obj.foo   #prints 1 the 1st time, "blah" 2nd time, etc
  puts csv.bar       #prints 2 the first time, 7 the 2nd time, etc
end

With Ruby's CSV module I believe I can only access the fields by index. I think the above code would be a bit more readable. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Using Ruby 1.9 and above, you can get a an indexable object:

CSV.foreach('my_file.csv', :headers => true) do |row|
  puts row['foo'] # prints 1 the 1st time, "blah" 2nd time, etc
  puts row['bar'] # prints 2 the first time, 7 the 2nd time, etc
end

It's not dot syntax but it is much nicer to work with than numeric indexes.

As an aside, for Ruby 1.8.x FasterCSV is what you need to use the above syntax.