known services to validate csv file

Question

Are there any good sites/services to validate consistency of CSV file ?

The same as W3C validator but for CSV ?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The Open Data Institute is developing a CSV validation service that will allow users to check the structure of their data as well as validate it against a simple schema.

The service is still very much in alpha but can be found here:

http://csvlint.io/

The code for the application and the underlying library are both open source:

https://github.com/theodi/csvlint

https://github.com/theodi/csvlint.rb

The README in the library provides a summary of the errors and warnings that can be generated. The following types of error can be reported:

• :wrong_content_type -- content type is not text/csv
• :ragged_rows -- row has a different number of columns (than the first row in the file)
• :blank_rows -- completely empty row, e.g. blank line or a line where all column values are empty
• :invalid_encoding -- encoding error when parsing row, e.g. because of invalid characters
• :not_found -- HTTP 404 error when retrieving the data
• :quoting -- problem with quoting, e.g. missing or stray quote, unclosed quoted field
• :whitespace -- a quoted column has leading or trailing whitespace

The following types of warning can be reported:

• :no_encoding -- the Content-Type header returned in the HTTP request does not have a charset parameter
• :encoding -- the character set is not UTF-8
• :no_content_type -- file is being served without a Content-Type header
• :excel -- no Content-Type header and the file extension is .xls
• :check_options -- CSV file appears to contain only a single column
• :inconsistent_values -- inconsistent values in the same column. Reported if <90% of values seem to have same data type (either numeric or alphanumeric including punctuation)