Ensure fgetcsv() reads the entire line

Question

I am using PHP to import data from a CSV file using fgetcsv(), which yields an array for each row. Initially, I had the character limit set at 1024, like so:

while ($data = fgetcsv($fp, 1024)) {
  // do stuff with the row
}

However, a CSV with 200+ columns surpassed the 1024 limit on many rows. This caused the line read to stop in the middle of a row, and then the next call to fgetcsv() would start where the previous one left off and so on until an EOL was reached.

I have since upped this limit to 4096, which should take care of the majority of cases, but I would like put a check in to be sure that the entire line was read after each line is fetched. How do I go about this?

I was thinking to check the end of the last element of the array for end of line characters (\n, \r, \r\n), but wouldn't these be parsed out by the fgetcsv() call?

Answer 1

Just omit the length parameter. It's optional in PHP5.

while ($data = fgetcsv($fp)) {
  // do stuff with the row
}

Answer 2

Just don't specify a limit, and fgetcsv() will slurp in as much as is necessary to capture a full line. If you do specify a limit, then it's entirely up to YOU to scan the file stream and ensure you're not slicing something down the middle.

However, note that not specifying a limit can be risky if you don't have control over generation of this .csv in the first place. It'd be easy to swamp your server with a malicious CSV that has a many terabytes of data on a single line.