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Description
Introduction to CSV and its applications, challenges
what is CSV and what it used for
CSV is an acronym for Comma-Separated Values. CSV is commonly used for data exchange between different applications, importing and exporting data from spreadsheets, etc.
Structure of CSV
- Rows : Each line in a CSV file represents a row of data. Each row typically corresponds to a record or a data entry.
- Columns: Within each row, the values are separated by a delimiter, often a comma(
,). Alternative delimiter values can also be a semicolon and tab, or any other character based on the requirements. - Headers(Optional): The first row of a CSV file is often used to store column names or headers. Which provide a lable for each column
Consideration and Challenges
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General Challenges
- Data Types: CSV treats all data as strings. If your data includes numbers or other non-text types, you may need to convert them explicitly in your code.
- Quoting: If your data contains the delimiter character itself (e.g., a comma) or line breaks, you might need to enclose the values in quotes.
- Encoding: Pay attention to the character encoding of your CSV files, especially when dealing with international characters.
- Parsing Errors: Be prepared to handle cases where the CSV data doesn't follow the expected structure.
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Challenges on parsing large csv file
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Performance:
- When parsing large CSV files, the browser's memory usage can increase significantly, potentially causing performance issues and even crashes, blocking the UI
- How to indicate the progress
- Optimization and Chunking: Efficiently parsing large CSV files require techs like chunking, where the file is processed in smaller segments to reduce memory consumption and improving performance.
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Solutions directions
- Web Workers: Use Web Workers to run the parsing task in a separate thread.
- Chunking: Break down the CSV file into smaller chunks and process them sequentially. This can help manage memory and prevent long blocking times.
- Streaming: If possible, stream the CSV data and process it in chunks as it arrives, rather than loading the entire file into memory.