How do I write data into CSV format as string (not file)?

Question

I want to cast data like [1,2,\'a\',\'He said \"what do you mean?\"\'] to a CSV-formatted string.

Normally one would use csv.writer() for

Answer 1

import csv
from StringIO import StringIO
with open('file.csv') as file:
    file = file.read()

stream = StringIO(file)

csv_file = csv.DictReader(stream)