Escape comma inside a column

[jkevinturado]

Hi,

My raw data got a comma from a certain field, While I'm parsing the data it cause me to have a new column instead. How do you escape a comma inside a column to prevent this?

Here is a example of raw csv data

"test@email.org, test2@mail.com",email.org,none,bad now the data returned from me is

[test@email.org,test2@mail.com,email.org,none,bad]

What I'm expecting is

["test@email.org,test2@mail.com",email.org,none,bad]

I tried to escape the comma by escape: '\\,' but it doesn't help

[wdavidw]

My understanding is: "test@email.org, test2@mail.com",email.org,none,bad is the source and you expect ["test@email.org,test2@mail.com",email.org,none,bad], right ?

This seems like the default behavior to me. I checked and can confirm with our online tool

[jkevinturado]

Yes that is correct, is this a default config?

[jkevinturado]

Hi,

I am escaping the double quotes and I need to escape that because some of the fields do have double quotes inside the field for example:

So this is my config btw:

[jkevinturado]

Hi, I'm using the default config.

Now the error is: Invalid Closing Quote: got "d" at line 1 instead of delimiter, record delimiter, trimable character (if activated) or comment

Because I have this double quote inside a field:

[wdavidw]

The screenshot I shared use the default config.

[wdavidw]

Please share a minimalist and complete example for additionnal help.

[jkevinturado]

Hi,

I was using the default config, I'm okay with the first issue which has the comma inside, now I have double quotes inside the field and it says

Here is the input please focus on the 2nd line which has the double quotes inside the field

[wdavidw]

Honestly, I don't think there is much we can do to handle such a scenario. The first quote place the parser in quoting mode and second quote is not escape which makes the field invalid

[jkevinturado]

I can actually escape the comma, using the option escape. Can I escape multiple characters?

I've tried escape: ',"' but I didn't work

[wdavidw]

Yes, escape may be composed of multiple characters: https://github.com/adaltas/node-csv/blob/master/packages/csv-parse/test/option.escape.coffee#L69-L79

[jkevinturado]

how?

[wdavidw]

Look at the tests with the link above, I based my answer on them.

[jkevinturado]

it didn't work, I think the link above you've provided will work if the character is contiguous.

Mine have to escape comma and double quotes just like this escape: ',"' unfortunately this doesn't work also as well

[patelkhushal18]

For me, I had to escape both , and \n. I ended up removing commas and \n inside matching double quotes before parsing:

// remove commas and newlines inside double-quoted fields
const cleanedData = data.replace(/"([^"]*?)"/g, match => match.replace(/[,\n]/g, ''));

const records = csvParse.parse(cleanedData, {
  columns: true,      // To treat first row as headers
  relax_quotes: true, // Allow quotes within quotes
});