DBD::CSV(3pm)

💅 DBD::CSV 💅

okay so bestie, you know how you need a DBI driver for CSV files? This is literally that. It's DBD::CSV(3pm) and it's about to be your new fave. No cap.

🎀 NAME 🎀

DBD::CSV — the DBI driver for CSV files. periodt.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Here's the vibe:

use DBI;
# See "Creating database handle" below
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
    f_ext      => ".csv/r",
    RaiseError => 1,
    }) or die "Cannot connect: $DBI::errstr";

# Simple statements
$dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE foo (id INTEGER, name CHAR (10))");

# Selecting
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("select * from foo");
$sth->execute;
$sth->bind_columns (\my ($id, $name));
while ($sth->fetch) {
    print "id: $id, name: $name\n";
    }

# Updates
my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("UPDATE foo SET name = ? WHERE id = ?");
$sth->execute ("DBI rocks!", 1);
$sth->finish;

$dbh->disconnect;

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So the DBD::CSV module is yet another driver for the DBI (Database independent interface for Perl). This one is based on the SQL "engine" SQL::Statement and the abstract DBI driver DBD::File and implements access to so-called CSV files (Comma Separated Values). Such files are often used for exporting MS Access and MS Excel data. iconic, honestly.

See DBI for details on DBI, SQL::Statement for details on SQL::Statement and DBD::File for details on the base class DBD::File.

🦋 Prerequisites 🦋

The only system dependent feature that DBD::File uses is the flock () function. Thus the module should run (in theory) on any system with a working flock (), in particular on all Unix machines and on Windows NT. Under Windows 95 and MacOS the use of flock () is disabled, thus the module should still be usable. lowkey wild but okay.

Unlike other DBI drivers, you don't need an external SQL engine or a running server. All you need are the following Perl modules, available from any CPAN mirror, for example

http://search.cpan.org/

• DBI — A recent version of the DBI (Database independent interface for Perl). See below why.
• DBD::File — This is the base class for DBD::CSV, and it is part of the DBI distribution. As DBD::CSV requires a matching version of DBD::File which is (partly) developed by the same team that maintains DBD::CSV. See META.json or Makefile.PL for the minimum versions.
• SQL::Statement — A simple SQL engine. This module defines all of the SQL syntax for DBD::CSV, new SQL support is added with each release so you should look for updates to SQL::Statement regularly. It is possible to run DBD::CSV without this module if you define the environment variable $DBI_SQL_NANO to 1. This will reduce the SQL support a lot though. See DBI::SQL::Nano for more details. Note that the test suite does only test in this mode in the development environment.
• Text::CSV_XS — This module is used to read and write rows in a CSV file.

💖 Installation 💖

Installing this module (and the prerequisites from above) is quite simple. The simplest way is to install the bundle:

$ cpan Bundle::DBD::CSV

Alternatively, you can name them all

$ cpan Text::CSV_XS DBI DBD::CSV

or even trust cpan to resolve all dependencies for you:

$ cpan DBD::CSV

If you cannot, for whatever reason, use cpan, fetch all modules from CPAN, and build with a sequence like:

gzip -d < DBD-CSV-0.40.tgz | tar xf -

(this is for Unix users, Windows users would prefer WinZip or something similar) and then enter the following:

cd DBD-CSV-0.40
perl Makefile.PL
make test

If any tests fail, let us know. Otherwise go on with

make install UNINST=1

Note that you almost definitely need root or administrator permissions. If you don't have them, read the ExtUtils::MakeMaker man page for details on installing in your own directories. ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

🌈 Supported SQL Syntax 🌈

All SQL processing for DBD::CSV is done by SQL::Statement. See SQL::Statement for more specific information about its feature set. Features include joins, aliases, built-in and user-defined functions, and more. See SQL::Statement::Syntax for a description of the SQL syntax supported in DBD::CSV.

Table- and column-names are case insensitive unless quoted. Column names will be sanitized unless raw_header is true.

💿 Using DBD::CSV with DBI

okay bestie, plot twist: for almost everything, DBD-CSV operates exactly like any other DBI driver. Like, it's giving standard DBI. 💖 Go read DBI for the detailed usage, that's where all the lore is.

🔌 Creating a database handle (connect)

So normally, creating a database handle implies connecting to a database server. Not us, we don't do servers here. This command just reads:

use DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
    f_dir => "/home/user/folder",
    });

That directory is literally telling the driver where it should create or open tables (a.k.a. files, iykyk 🫶). It defaults to the current directory, so the following are all the same vibe:

$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:");
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, { f_dir => "." });
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:f_dir=.");

We were told that VMS might — for whatever reason, no cap — require:

$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:f_dir=");

The preferred way of passing the arguments is by driver attributes 💅:

# specify most possible flags via driver flags
$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
    f_schema         => undef,
    f_dir            => "data",
    f_dir_search     => [],
    f_ext            => ".csv/r",
    f_lock           => 2,
    f_encoding       => "utf8",

    csv_eol          => "\r\n",
    csv_sep_char     => ",",
    csv_quote_char   => '"',
    csv_escape_char  => '"',
    csv_class        => "Text::CSV_XS",
    csv_null         => 1,
    csv_bom          => 0,
    csv_tables       => {
        syspwd => {
            sep_char    => ":",
            quote_char  => undef,
            escape_char => undef,
            file        => "/etc/passwd",
            col_names   => [qw( login password
                                uid gid realname
                                directory shell )],
            },
        },

    RaiseError       => 1,
    PrintError       => 1,
    FetchHashKeyName => "NAME_lc",
    }) or die $DBI::errstr;

but you may set these attributes in the DSN as well, separated by semicolons. ⚠️ Pay attention to the semi-colon for csv_sep_char (as seen in many CSV exports from MS Excel) — it's being escaped in the example below, because otherwise it would be seen as an attribute separator:

$dbh = DBI->connect (
    "dbi:CSV:f_dir=$ENV{HOME}/csvdb;f_ext=.csv;f_lock=2;" .
    "f_encoding=utf8;csv_eol=\n;csv_sep_char=\\;;" .
    "csv_quote_char=\";csv_escape_char=\\;csv_class=Text::CSV_XS;" .
    "csv_null=1") or die $DBI::errstr;

Using attributes in the DSN is easier to use when the DSN is derived from an outside source (environment variable, database entry, or configure file), whereas specifying entries in the attribute hash is easier to read and to maintain. 🎀

The default value for csv_binary is 1 (True).

The default value for csv_auto_diag is 1. 📌 Note that this might cause trouble on perl versions older than 5.8.9, so up to and including perl version 5.8.8 it might be required to use ;csv_auto_diag=0 inside the DSN or csv_auto_diag = 0 inside the attributes.

---

🗂️ Creating and dropping tables

You can create and drop tables with commands like the following:

$dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE $table (id INTEGER, name CHAR (64))");
$dbh->do ("DROP TABLE $table");

⚠️ Note that currently only the column names will be stored and no other data. So all other information — including column type (INTEGER or CHAR (x), for example), column attributes (NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY, ...) — will silently be discarded. This may change in a later release. 💀

A drop just removes the file without any warning. Like, gone. Poof. 😭

See DBI for more details.

Table names cannot be arbitrary, due to restrictions of the SQL syntax. I recommend that table names are valid SQL identifiers: the first character is alphabetic, followed by an arbitrary number of alphanumeric characters. If you want to use other files, the file names must start with "/", "./" or "../" and they must not contain white space. ✨

📝 Inserting, fetching and modifying data

The following examples insert some data in a table and fetch it back. First, an example where the column data is concatenated in the SQL string:

$dbh->do ("INSERT INTO $table VALUES (1, ".
           $dbh->quote ("foobar") . ")");

Note the use of the quote method for escaping the word "foobar". Any string must be escaped, even if it does not contain binary data. 🫶

Next, an example using parameters:

$dbh->do ("INSERT INTO $table VALUES (?, ?)", undef, 2,
          "It's a string!");

Note that you don't need to quote column data passed as parameters. This version is particularly well designed for loops. Whenever performance is an issue, I recommend using this method. 🔥

You might wonder about the "undef". Don't wonder, just take it as it is. :-) It's an attribute argument that I have never used and will be passed to the prepare method as the second argument. 🌈

To retrieve data, you can use the following:

my $query = "SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id > 1 ORDER BY id";
my $sth   = $dbh->prepare ($query);
$sth->execute ();
while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
    print "Found result row: id = ", $row->{id},
          ", name = ", $row->{name};
    }
$sth->finish ();

Again, column binding works. The same example again:

my $sth = $dbh->prepare (qq;
    SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id > 1 ORDER BY id;
    ;);
$sth->execute;
my ($id, $name);
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
while ($sth->fetch) {
    print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
    }
$sth->finish;

Of course you can even use input parameters. Here's the same example for the third time:

my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?");
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
    $sth->execute ($id);
    if ($sth->fetch) {
        print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
        }
    $sth->finish;
    }

See DBI for details on these methods. See SQL::Statement for details on the WHERE clause. 👑

Data rows are modified with the UPDATE statement:

$dbh->do ("UPDATE $table SET id = 3 WHERE id = 1");

Likewise you use the DELETE statement for removing rows:

$dbh->do ("DELETE FROM $table WHERE id > 1");

🚨 Error handling

In the above examples we have never cared about return codes. Of course, this is not recommended. Instead we should have written (for example):

my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?") or
    die "prepare: " . $dbh->errstr ();
$sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name) or
    die "bind_columns: " . $dbh->errstr ();
for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
    $sth->execute ($id) or
        die "execute: " . $dbh->errstr ();
    $sth->fetch and
        print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
    }
$sth->finish ($id) or die "finish: " . $dbh->errstr ();

Obviously this is tedious. 😩 Fortunately we have DBI's RaiseError attribute:

$dbh->{RaiseError} = 1;
$@ = "";
eval {
    my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = ?");
    $sth->bind_columns (undef, \$id, \$name);
    for (my $i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++) {
        $sth->execute ($id);
        $sth->fetch and
            print "Found result row: id = $id, name = $name\n";
        }
    $sth->finish ($id);
    };
$@ and die "SQL database error: $@";

This is not only shorter, it even works when using DBI methods within subroutines. ✨ slay.

---

🗄️ DBI database handle attributes

🔎 Metadata

The following attributes are handled by DBI itself and not by DBD::File, so they all work as expected:

Active
ActiveKids
CachedKids
CompatMode             (Not used)
InactiveDestroy
Kids
PrintError
RaiseError
Warn                   (Not used)

The following DBI attributes are handled by DBD::File:

• AutoCommit — Always on 🫶
• ChopBlanks — Works
• NUM_OF_FIELDS — Valid after $sth->execute
• NUM_OF_PARAMS — Valid after $sth->prepare
• NAME
• NAME_lc
• NAME_uc — Valid after $sth->execute; undef for Non-Select statements.
• NULLABLE — Not really working. 😭 Always returns an array ref of one's, as DBD::CSV does not verify input data. Valid after $sth->execute; undef for non-Select statements.

These attributes and methods are not supported:

bind_param_inout
CursorName
LongReadLen
LongTruncOk

🎀 DBD-CSV specific database handle attributes

In addition to the DBI attributes, you can use the following dbh attributes:

📁 DBD::File attributes

• f_dir — This attribute is used for setting the directory where CSV files are opened. Usually you set it in the dbh and it defaults to the current directory ("."). However, it may be overridden in statement handles. 🌸
• f_dir_search — This attribute optionally defines a list of extra directories to search when opening existing tables. It should be an anonymous list or an array reference listing all folders where tables could be found. 👀

my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
    f_dir        => "data",
    f_dir_search => [ "ref/data", "ref/old" ],
    f_ext        => ".csv/r",
    }) or die $DBI::errstr;

• f_ext — This attribute is used for setting the file extension.
• f_schema — This attribute allows you to set the database schema name. The default is to use the owner of f_dir. "undef" is allowed, but not in the DSN part. ✨

my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", {
    f_schema => undef,
    f_dir    => "data",
    f_ext    => ".csv/r",
    }) or die $DBI::errstr;

• f_encoding — This attribute allows you to set the encoding of the data. With CSV, it is not possible to set (and remember) the encoding on a column basis, but DBD::File now allows the encoding to be set on the underlying file. If this attribute is not set, or undef is passed, the file will be seen as binary. 💅
• f_lock — With this attribute you can specify a locking mode to be used (if locking is supported at all) for opening tables. By default, tables are opened with a shared lock for reading, and with an exclusive lock for writing. The supported modes are:
  • 0 — Force no locking at all.
  • 1 — Only shared locks will be used.

2. Only exclusive locks will be used.

But fr, go check out "KNOWN BUGS" in DBD::File before you go locking everything, bestie.

---

💫 DBD::CSV specific attributes 💫

🎀 csv_class

This one is literally the vibe-setter for your CSV parsing engine. It defaults to Text::CSV_XS, but you can use Text::CSV in some cases too. Just know that Text::CSV does not care about any edge case the way Text::CSV_XS does, and it's probably about 100 times slower than Text::CSV_XS. Ngl, that's a lot. 😭

If you wanna use a class that isn't Text::CSV_XS, you have to load it yourself before use. DBD::CSV does not require or use the class on its own. You're on your own for that part, bestie. 🫶

---

✨ Text::CSV_XS specific attributes ✨

🌸 csv_eol, csv_sep_char, csv_quote_char, csv_escape_char, csv_csv

Okay so csv_eol, csv_sep_char, csv_quote_char and csv_escape_char are the matching besties of the respective attributes on the csv_class object (usually Text::CSV_CS). You'll want to set these if your CSV files are giving unusual, like /etc/passwd or those MS Excel generated CSV files with a semicolon as the separator. The defaults are "\015\012", ",", """ and """, respectively. Slay.

The csv_eol attribute defines the end-of-line pattern — better known as a record separator pattern, since it's the thing separating records. Default is windows-style end-of-lines "\015\012" for output (writing) and unset for input (reading), so if you're on unix you may want to set it to newline ("\n") like this:

$dbh->{csv_eol} = "\n";

You can also use multi-character patterns as record separators, which is honestly kind of iconic. Example: this file uses newlines as field separators (sep_char) and the pattern "\n__ENDREC__\n" as the record separators (eol):

name
city
__ENDREC__
joe
seattle
__ENDREC__
sue
portland
__ENDREC__

To handle this file, you'd do this:

$dbh->{eol}      = "\n__ENDREC__\n" ,
$dbh->{sep_char} = "\n"

These attributes are used to create an instance of the class csv_class, by default Text::CSV_XS. Alternatively you may pass an instance as csv_csv — the latter takes precedence. 📌 Note that the binary attribute must be set to a true value in that case, no cap.

Also you may overwrite these attributes on a per-table base in the csv_tables attribute. Per-table glow-ups, we love to see it. 💅

🦋 csv_null

With this option set, all new statement handles will set "always_quote" and "blank_is_undef" in the CSV parser and writer, so it knows how to tell the difference between the empty string and "undef" or "NULL". Heads up: you cannot reset it with a false value. You can pass it to connect, or set it later:

$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", { csv_null => 1 });

$dbh->{csv_null} = 1;

🌈 csv_bom

With this option set, the CSV parser will try to detect BOM (Byte Order Mark) in the header line. This requires Text::CSV_XS version 1.22 or higher — check your version first, bestie.

$dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", "", "", { csv_bom => 1 });

$dbh->{csv_bom} = 1;

👑 csv_tables

This hash ref is used for storing table dependent metadata. For any table it contains an element with the table name as key and another hash ref with the following attributes:

• All valid attributes to the CSV parsing module. Any of them can optionally be prefixed with csv_.
• All attributes valid to DBD::File

If you pass it f_file or its alias file, f_ext has no effect, but f_dir and f_encoding still have.

csv_tables => {
    syspwd => {                   # Table name
        csv_sep_char => ":",      # Text::CSV_XS
        quote_char   => undef,    # Text::CSV_XS
        escape_char  => undef,    # Text::CSV_XS
        f_dir        => "/etc",   # DBD::File
        f_file       => "passwd", # DBD::File
        col_names    =>           # DBD::File
          [qw( login password uid gid realname directory shell )],
        },
    },

🍓 csv_*

All other attributes that start with csv_ and are not described above will be passed to Text::CSV_XS (without the csv_ prefix). These extra options are only likely to be useful for reading (select) handles. Examples:

$dbh->{csv_allow_whitespace}    = 1;
$dbh->{csv_allow_loose_quotes}  = 1;
$dbh->{csv_allow_loose_escapes} = 1;

See the "Text::CSV_XS" documentation for the full list and the documentation. iykyk 📚

---

💜 Driver specific attributes 💜

⭐ f_file

The name of the file used for the table; defaults to

"$dbh->{f_dir}/$table"

🧚 eol, sep_char, quote_char, escape_char, class, csv

These correspond to the attributes csv_eol, csv_sep_char, csv_quote_char, csv_escape_char, csv_class and csv_csv. The difference is that they work on a per-table basis. Cute, right?

🎀 col_names, skip_first_row

By default DBD::CSV assumes that column names are stored in the first row of the CSV file and sanitizes them (see "raw_header" below). If that's not the case, you can supply an array ref of table names with the col_names attribute. In that case the attribute skip_first_row will be set to FALSE.

If you supply an empty array ref, the driver will read the first row for you, count the number of columns and create column names like "col0", "col1", ...

Note that column names that match reserved SQL words will cause unwanted and sometimes confusing errors. If your CSV has headers that match reserved words, you will require these two attributes.

If "test.csv" looks like

select,from
1,2

the select query would result in "select select, from from test;", which obviously is illegal SQL. 💀 Yeah. Not it.

🌸 raw_header

Due to the SQL standard, field names cannot contain special characters like a dot (".") or a space (" ") unless the column names are quoted. Following the approach of mdb_tools, all these tokens are translated to an underscore ("_") when reading the first line of the CSV file, so all field names are 'sanitized'. If you do not want this to happen, set "raw_header" to a true value and the entries in the first line of the CSV data will be used verbatim for column headers and field names. But fr fr, DBD::CSV cannot guarantee that any part in the toolchain will work if field names have those characters, and the chances are high that the SQL statements will fail. So like... proceed with caution, bestie.

Currently, the sanitizing of headers is as simple as

s/\W/_/g;

Note that headers (column names) might be folded in other parts of the code stack, specifically SQL::Statement, whose docs mention:

Wildcards are expanded to lower cased identifiers. This might confuse some people, but it was easier to implement.

That means that in

my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("select * from foo");
$sth->execute;
while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
    say for keys %$row;
    }

all keys will show as all lower case, regardless of the original header. 🙈

It's strongly recommended to check the attributes supported by "Metadata" in DBD::File.

Example: Suppose you want to use /etc/passwd as a CSV file. :-) There simplest way is:

use DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
    f_dir           => "/etc",
    csv_sep_char    => ":",
    csv_quote_char  => undef,
    csv_escape_char => undef,
    });
$dbh->{csv_tables}{passwd} = {
    col_names => [qw( login password uid gid realname
                      directory shell )];
    };
$sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM passwd");

Another possibility where you leave all the defaults as they are and override them on a per table basis:

require DBI;
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:");
$dbh->{csv_tables}{passwd} = {
    eol         => "\n",
    sep_char    => ":",
    quote_char  => undef,
    escape_char => undef,
    f_file      => "/etc/passwd",
    col_names   => [qw( login password uid gid
                        realname directory shell )],
    };
$sth = $dbh->prepare ("SELECT * FROM passwd");

---

🦋 Driver private methods 🦋

These methods are inherited from DBD::File:

💖 data_sources

The "data_sources" method returns a list of sub-directories of the current directory in the form dbi:CSV:directory=$dirname.

If you want to read the sub-directories of another directory, use

my $drh  = DBI->install_driver ("CSV");
my @list = $drh->data_sources (f_dir => "/usr/local/csv_data");

💫 list_tables

This method returns a list of file-names inside $dbh->{directory}. Example:

my $dbh  = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:directory=/usr/local/csv_data");
my @list = $dbh->func ("list_tables");

Note that the list includes all files contained in the directory, even those that have non-valid table names, from the view of SQL. See "Creating and dropping tables" above.

---

💀 KNOWN ISSUES 💀

• The module is using flock () internally. However, this function is not available on some platforms. Use of flock () is disabled on MacOS and Windows 95: there's no locking at all (perhaps not so important on these operating systems, as they are for single users anyways).

---

🔥 TODO 🔥

🎀 Tests

Aim for a full 100% code coverage

• eol — Make tests for different record separators.
• csv_xs — Test with a variety of combinations for sep_char, quote_char, and escape_char testing
• quoting — $dbh->do ("drop table $_") for DBI-tables ();
• errors — Make sure that all documented exceptions are tested.
  • write to write-protected file
  • read from badly formatted csv
  • pass bad arguments to csv parser while fetching

Add tests that specifically test DBD::File functionality where that is useful.

🦋 RT

Attack all open DBD::CSV bugs in RT

🌈 CPAN::Forum

Attack all items in http://www.cpanforum.com/dist/DBD-CSV

👑 Documentation

Expand on error-handling, and document all possible errors. Use Text::CSV_XS::error_diag () wherever possible.

⭐ Debugging

Implement and document dbd_verbose.

🍓 Data dictionary

Investigate the possibility to store the data dictionary in a file like .sys$columns that can store the field attributes (type, key, nullable).

💜 Examples

Make more real-life examples from the docs in examples/

🌈 SEE ALSO 🦋

Okay bestie, when you're done here and you want more, go bother these:

• DBI — the whole reason we exist 💅
• Text::CSV_XS — the CSV parsing king underneath it all ✨
• SQL::Statement — the SQL engine doing the heavy lifting
• DBI::SQL::Nano — the lil' minimal SQL engine option

Wanna chat with actual humans about using DBD::CSV? The DBI users mailing list is right there:

http://lists.cpan.org/showlist.cgi?name=dbi-users

And for general DBI lore:

http://dbi.perl.org/ and http://faq.dbi-support.com/

---

👑 AUTHORS and MAINTAINERS 💖

The current upkeep of this module is handled by:

H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>

working super closely with, and getting big help from:

Jens Rehsack <sno@NetBSD.org>

And the original author? Jochen Wiedmann — the icon who started it all 🫶. The previous maintainer was Jeff Zucker.

---

📜 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE ⭐

Legal era, don't skip it bestie:

Copyright (C) 2009-2025 by H.Merijn Brand
Copyright (C) 2004-2009 by Jeff Zucker
Copyright (C) 1998-2004 by Jochen Wiedmann

All rights reserved.

You may distribute this module under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file. Slay, pick either, both are fine 🌸

---

and that's a wrap on the whole page, you made it 🎀💖

This one came from perl v5.40.1, dated 2026-06-21, and it lives at DBD::CSV(3pm) — go forth and query all the CSVs, no cap 👑✨