Open the file in universal-newline mode using the CSV Django module

Question

I am trying to access a model.filefield in Django to parse a CSV file in Python using the csv module. It's working on Windows, but on Mac it gave me this:

Exception Type: Error

Exception Value: new-line character seen in unquoted field - do you need to open the file in universal-newline mode?

This is the code:

myfile = customerbulk.objects.all()[0].fileup

mydata = csv.reader(myfile)
    for email,mobile,name,civilid in mydata:
        print email,mobile,name,civilid

Solution

I finally found the solution:

mypath = customerbulk.objects.get(pk=1).fileup.path
o = open(mypath,'rU')
mydata = csv.reader(o)

Comments

[GajananB]

I believe you can simplify this. It seems odd to seek to the start after just opening the file. The following helped me overcome the same issue from an Excel spreadsheet export to CSV using the defaults: data = csv.reader(open(FILENAME, 'rU'), quotechar='"', delimiter = ',')

[rd108]

Yes, there's no need to seek to beginning of file just after opening. The >>>o = open(mypath, 'rU') bit, with the 'rU' flag is the important magic that worked in my case.

[Xiao]

PEP278 explained what rU stands for:In a Python with universal newline support open() the mode parameter can also be "U", meaning "open for input as a text file with universal newline interpretation". Mode "rU" is also allowed, for symmetry with "rb".

[Naymesh Mistry]

@Xiao +1 for linking to the original PEP which explains the rationale.

[Tim Diels]

In Python >= 3, use newline instead, the default is newline=None which is like newline='' except it also translates the newlines to \n. I'm unsure which of these is equivalent to mode='U'