FasterCSV 0.2.0 -- The user requests release!

bbazzarrakk · April 1, 2006, 10:42pm

FasterCSV 0.2.0 Released

FasterCSV has a ton of new features from requests (some even provided
patches) by you! It’s very hard for me to pick what to show off
here, but if I had to pick two favorites it would be using an Array
of headers and the new shortcut interface.

Since 0.1.6, FasterCSV has allowed named access for columns. Now you
can say goodbye to indexes altogether as Dakshinamurthy K. has
sent in a patch allowing you to specify an Array of headers to use
for any document. Just setup the headers when you create the
instance and it’s nothing but names you’ll have to worry about from
then on.

Ara.T.Howard also sent in a patch for a short but powerful interface
extension. Check this out:

FCSV { |csv_out| csv_out << %w{my data here} } # to
STDOUT
FCSV(csv = “”) { |csv_str| csv_str << %w{my data here} } # to a
String
FCSV(STDERR) { |csv_err| csv_err << %w{my data here} } # to
STDERR

You can wrap IO objects with that, change options, or whatever. It
also caches the instance so subsequent calls won’t invent another
FasterCSV object.

There’s a lot more in this release though, including serialization
similar to what Hal F. described in his metaprogramming article
and a CSV compatibility layer for easy transitioning.

If you work with CSV data, you want to download this release, trust me!

What is FasterCSV?

(from the README)

FasterCSV is intended as a replacement to Ruby’s standard CSV
library. It was designed to address concerns users of that library
had and it has three primary goals:

Be significantly faster than CSV while remaining a pure Ruby
library.
Use a smaller and easier to maintain code base. (We’re about
even now,
but not if you compare the features!)
Improve on the CSV interface.