Re: How best to archive in CSV format
Re: How best to archive in CSV format
- Subject: Re: How best to archive in CSV format
- From: Denis Stanton <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 14:08:34 +1200
On May 17, 2005, at 1:43 PM, Bob Ippolito wrote:
On May 16, 2005, at 9:37 PM, Brian Smith wrote:
On May 17, 2005, at 4:51 AM, Denis Stanton wrote:
I'm looking for advice on the best way to handle archiving my
documents in csv (comma separated variable) format.
These doubts make me think I'm going about this all wrong. Should
I be using the encode and decode system to convert to and from csvs
format?
Look at the references document to NSString and NSArray since they
have some methods for working with delimited data. You will find a
couple of methods for working with making and parsing strings from
arrays of strings and setting the delimiter to whatever you want,
(NSString)componentsSeparatedByString: and
(NSArray)componentsJoinedByString:. Also, you will find read and
write methods for creating files.
That sounds like a really bad idea because you need to deal with
quoting and such. You'll have to code this up by hand unless you can
find existing C or Objective-C code to do it. NSStringScanner might
help.
One alternative is to look at PyObjC, because Python ships with a csv
module.. though it's not optimal since current versions have a
limitation such that it only knows how to deal with bytestrings, not
unicode, so you have to encode everything into utf-8 before putting it
into the csv and decode it from utf-8 after getting it out.
In other words, it's time to decide whether you REALLY need CSV :)
-bob
Thanks Brian and Bob
I have a reasonable idea of how to do the string handling parts with
componentsSeparatedByString and componentsJoinedByString.
That's not the part that worries me. My question whether I should be
writing this CSV conversion stuff inside the standard methods
encodeWithCoder and initWithCoder, and if so how. It seems the Cocoa
architecture has a well-thoughtout mechanism for archiving and I should
try and work within it. My problem is the example I have produces a
binary coded disk file and I need csv text. I want to make the Cocoa
archive mechanism work with csv.
I know that there are traps in this as one of my data columns could
contain commas, so I need to worry about quotes, but for the present
task I do have to conform to csv because I am going to propose this
Cocoa application as a replacement for an existing web-browser based
data entry program and it's important to show that it can simply
replace the older program with out requiring anybody else to change.
Denis
Denis Stanton
Orcon Internet Limited
(09) 480 9299
http://www.orcon.net.nz
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Cocoa-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden