in2csv - Man Page

• Convert an XLS file to CSV: in2csv data.xls
• Convert a DBF file to a CSV file: in2csv data.dbf > data.csv
• Convert a specific sheet from an XLSX file to CSV: in2csv --sheet=sheet_name data.xlsx
• Pipe a JSON file to in2csv: cat data.json | in2csv -f json > data.csv

tldr.sh

Converts various tabular data formats into CSV.

Converting fixed width requires that you provide a schema file with the “-s” option. The schema file should have the following format:

column,start,length
name,0,30
birthday,30,10
age,40,3

The header line is required though the columns may be in any order:

usage: in2csv [-h] [-d DELIMITER] [-t] [-q QUOTECHAR] [-u {0,1,2,3}] [-b]
              [-p ESCAPECHAR] [-z FIELD_SIZE_LIMIT] [-e ENCODING] [-L LOCALE]
              [-S] [--blanks] [--null-value NULL_VALUES [NULL_VALUES ...]]
              [--date-format DATE_FORMAT] [--datetime-format DATETIME_FORMAT]
              [-H] [-K SKIP_LINES] [-v] [-l] [--zero] [-V]
              [-f {csv,dbf,fixed,geojson,json,ndjson,xls,xlsx}] [-s SCHEMA]
              [-k KEY] [-n] [--sheet SHEET] [--write-sheets WRITE_SHEETS]
              [--use-sheet-names] [--reset-dimensions]
              [--encoding-xls ENCODING_XLS] [-y SNIFF_LIMIT] [-I]
              [FILE]

Convert common, but less awesome, tabular data formats to CSV.

positional arguments:
  FILE                  The CSV file to operate on. If omitted, will accept
                        input as piped data via STDIN.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -f {csv,dbf,fixed,geojson,json,ndjson,xls,xlsx}, --format {csv,dbf,fixed,geojson,json,ndjson,xls,xlsx}
                        The format of the input file. If not specified will be
                        inferred from the file type.
  -s SCHEMA, --schema SCHEMA
                        Specify a CSV-formatted schema file for converting
                        fixed-width files. See web documentation.
  -k KEY, --key KEY     Specify a top-level key to look within for a list of
                        objects to be converted when processing JSON.
  -n, --names           Display sheet names from the input Excel file.
  --sheet SHEET         The name of the Excel sheet to operate on.
  --write-sheets WRITE_SHEETS
                        The names of the Excel sheets to write to files, or
                        "-" to write all sheets.
  --use-sheet-names     Use the sheet names as file names when --write-sheets
                        is set.
  --reset-dimensions    Ignore the sheet dimensions provided by the XLSX file.
  --encoding-xls ENCODING_XLS
                        Specify the encoding of the input XLS file.
  -y SNIFF_LIMIT, --snifflimit SNIFF_LIMIT
                        Limit CSV dialect sniffing to the specified number of
                        bytes. Specify "0" to disable sniffing.
  -I, --no-inference    Disable type inference (and --locale, --date-format,
                        --datetime-format) when parsing CSV input.

 Some command-line flags only pertain to specific input formats.

See also: Arguments common to all tools.

NOTE:

The “ndjson” format refers to “newline delimited JSON”, as used by many streaming APIs.

NOTE:

If an XLS looks identical to an XLSX when viewed in Excel, they may not be identical as CSV. For example, XLSX has an integer type, but XLS doesn’t. Numbers that look like integers from an XLS will have decimals in CSV, but those from an XLSX won’t.

NOTE:

To convert from HTML, consider messytables.

Convert the 2000 census geo headers file from fixed-width to CSV and from latin-1 encoding to utf8:

in2csv -e iso-8859-1 -f fixed -s examples/realdata/census_2000/census2000_geo_schema.csv examples/realdata/census_2000/usgeo_excerpt.upl

NOTE:

A library of fixed-width schemas is maintained in the ffs project:

https://github.com/wireservice/ffs

Convert an Excel .xls file:

in2csv examples/test.xls

Standardize the formatting of a CSV file (quoting, line endings, etc.):

in2csv examples/realdata/FY09_EDU_Recipients_by_State.csv

Fetch csvkit’s open issues from the GitHub API, convert the JSON response into a CSV and write it to a file:

curl https://api.github.com/repos/wireservice/csvkit/issues?state=open | in2csv -f json -v

Convert a DBase DBF file to an equivalent CSV:

in2csv examples/testdbf.dbf

This tool names unnamed headers. To avoid that behavior, run:

in2csv --no-header-row examples/test.xlsx | tail -n +2

If an error like the following occurs when providing an input file in CSV or Excel format:

ValueError: Row 0 has 11 values, but Table only has 1 columns.

Then the input file might have initial rows before the header and data rows. You can skip such rows with --skip-lines (-K):

in2csv --skip-lines 3 examples/test_skip_lines.csv

If an XLSX file yields too few rows or too few columns, then the application that created the file might have incorrectly set the worksheet’s dimensions. Try again with the --reset-dimensions option.

Christopher Groskopf and contributors

2024, Christopher Groskopf and James McKinney