Ruby: How to generate CSV files that has Excel-fri

Question

I am generating CSV files that needs to be opened and reviewed in Excel once they have been generated. It seems that Excel requires a different encoding than UTF-8.

Here is my config and generation code:

csv_config = {col_sep: ";", 
              row_sep: "\n", 
              encoding: Encoding::UTF_8
             }

csv_string = CSV.generate(csv_config) do |csv|
  csv << ["Text a", "Text b", "Text æ", "Text ø", "Text å"]
end

When opening this in Excel, the special characters are not being displayed properly:

Text a  Text b  Text æ Text ø Text å

Any idea how to ensure proper encoding?

Answer 1

config = {

  encoding: 'ISO-8859-1'
}

CSV.generate(config) { |csv|  csv << ["Text á", "Text é", "Text æ"] }

Answer 2

The top voted answer from @joaofraga worked for me, but I found an alternative solution that also worked - no UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 transcoding required.

From what I've read, Excel, can indeed handle UTF-8, but for some reason, it doesn't recognize it by default. But if you add a BOM to the beginning of the CSV data, this seems to cause Excel to realise that the file is UTF-8.

So, if you have a CSV like so:

csv_string = CSV.generate(csv_config) do |csv|
  csv << ["Text a", "Text b", "Text æ", "Text ø", "Text å"]
end

just add a BOM byte like so:

"\uFEFF" + csv_string

In my case, my controller is sending the CSV as a file, so this is what my controller looks like:

def show
  respond_to do |format|
    format.csv do
      #  add BOM to force Excel to realise this file is encoded in UTF-8, so it respects special characters
      send_data "\uFEFF" + csv_string, type: :csv, filename: "csv.csv"
    end
  end
end

I should note that UTF-8 itself does not require or recommend a BOM at all, but as I mentioned, adding it in this case seemed to nudge Excel into realising that the file was indeed UTF-8.

Answer 3

Excel understands UTF-8 CSV if it has BOM. That can be done like:

Use CSV.generate

# the argument of CSV.generate is default string
csv_string = CSV.generate("\uFEFF") do |csv|
  csv << ["Text a", "Text b", "Text æ", "Text ø", "Text å"]
end

Use CSV.open

filename = "/tmp/example.csv"

# Default output encoding is UTF-8
CSV.open(filename, "w") do |csv|
  csv.to_io.write "\uFEFF" # use CSV#to_io to write BOM directly 
  csv << ["Text a", "Text b", "Text æ", "Text ø", "Text å"]
end

Answer 4

You should switch the encoding to ISO-8859-1 as following:

CSV.generate(encoding: 'ISO-8859-1') { |csv|  csv << ["Text á", "Text é", "Text æ"] }

For your context, you can do this:

config = {
  col_sep: ';',
  row_sep: ';',
  encoding: 'ISO-8859-1'
}

CSV.generate(config) { |csv|  csv << ["Text á", "Text é", "Text æ"] }

I had the same issue and that encoding fixed.