Getting strange characters when using cffile to loop over a csv

Question

I' am on ColdFusion 11. I' am using the following code to loop over a CSV File and output the first row in the loop.

<cffile action="read" file="C:\inetpub\wwwroot\test\file.csv" variable="csvfile">
<cfloop index="index" list="#csvfile#" delimiters="#chr(10)##chr(13)#"> 
    <cfoutput>#listgetAt('#index#',1, ',')#</cfoutput>
</cfloop>

It's outputting something strange characters. Here is the screenshot.

My CSV Structure

Please help!

Open the csv file with Notepad. Copy the first line to Word. Display non-printable characters. — Dan Bracuk, Nov 01 '15 at 20:57
`ListGetAt` ignores empty elements, so do not use it unless you are 100% certain the CSV file will never contain empty elements. There are also more robust methods for parsing CSV files, such as [OpenCSV](http://stackoverflow.com/a/18026854/104223), etcetera. — Leigh, Nov 02 '15 at 00:43

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '15 at 21:06

You are reading an XLSX (MS Excel) file that has had its changed to CSV.

Notice how it starts with PK and is followed by .xml. This is a PK ZIP of XML, which is the native format for XLXS.

As a test, you can rename it to .zip and unzip it. You will see lots and lots of folders and .xml files

How to correct

You need to save as CSV, not just rename to CSV

Getting strange characters when using cffile to loop over a csv

1 Answers1