for later reference: this avoids writing to the filesystem and allows you to pass the form_name in through the settings

csv to survey

import pyxform
from StringIO import StringIO

def csv_to_survey(csv_txt):
    csv_io = StringIO(csv_txt)
    workbook_repr = pyxform.xls2json_backends.csv_to_dict(csv_io)
    try:
        form_name = workbook_repr['settings'][0][u'id_string']
    except KeyError, e:
        form_name = "xform"
    json_repr = pyxform.xls2json.workbook_to_json(workbook_repr, "PREVIEW_%s" % form_name)
    survey = pyxform.create_survey_element_from_dict(json_repr)
    return survey