Unicode safe extension to csv.DictReader

unicodecsv.py

"""
Safely deal with unicode(utf-8) in csv files

removing nasty BOM surprises
"""

import csv
import codecs


def unicode_csv_dictreader(path, *args, **kwargs):
    "create a csv dict reader that copes with encoding correctly"
    # utf-8-sig strips off a BOM if it's present
    stream = codecs.open(path, encoding='utf-8-sig')
    return UnicodeCSVDictReader(stream, *args, **kwargs)

class UnicodeCSVDictReader(csv.DictReader):
    def __init__(self, unicode_csvfile, *args, **kwargs):
        decoder = codecs.getdecoder('utf-8')
        self.decoder = lambda v: decoder(v)[0]
        utf8_csvfile = codecs.iterencode(unicode_csvfile, encoding='utf-8')
        # bollicks to csv.DictReader being an oldstyle class
        csv.DictReader.__init__(self, utf8_csvfile, *args, **kwargs)
        self.fieldnames = [self.decoder(f) for f in self.fieldnames]

    def next(self):
        data = csv.DictReader.next(self)
        return {k: self.decoder(v) for (k,v) in data.iteritems()}