How to convert a CSV file using a PHP script

Question

I need to convert a CSV file to UTF-8 and rename it using a PHP script.

The following code worked on my PC but now i need to do this on a server as a CRON task

iconv -f UTF-16LE -t UTF-8 OLD-FILE.csv > NEW-FILE.csv

Anyone know the equivalent in PHP. Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

A simple method would be to load the CSV file to a string using this command:

• http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php

Then you can UTF-8 Encode the string using this command:

• http://php.net/manual/en/function.utf8-encode.php

Finally write the string to a file using file_put_contents.

Finished code could look like this:

$file_data = file_get_contents('/my/path/to/file.csv');
$utf8_file_data = utf8_encode($file_data);
$new_file_name = '/my/path/to/new_file.csv';
file_put_contents($new_file_name , $utf8_file_data );

Make sure the web server has the correct permissions to both read and write to appropriate locations.

Here is the link to file_put_contents():

• http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-put-contents.php

Answer 2

So here is the solution I found thanks to our brainstorming:

<?php
$file_data = file_get_contents('/home/MYFILE.csv');
//$utf8_file_data = utf8_encode($file_data);

$utf8_file_data = mb_convert_encoding($file_data, "UTF-8", "UTF-16LE");
//$utf8_file_data = iconv("UTF-16LE","UTF-8",$file_data);

$new_file_name = '/home/MYFILE_NEW.csv';
file_put_contents($new_file_name , $utf8_file_data );
?>

The only pb is that the output size is twice as big as the input. If I use ICONV on my PC it is HALF the size...

If anyone knows I'd like to hear why.