csv-parser

An RFC 4180 CSV parser and stringifier for TypeScript/Node. Handles the parts of CSV that trip up naive split(',') implementations: quoted fields, escaped "" quotes, commas and newlines embedded inside quoted fields, both CRLF and LF line endings, and a streaming-friendly chunked API for large inputs. Zero runtime dependencies.

Install

Copy src/index.ts into your project, or build this repo (npm run build) and depend on the compiled dist/.

Quickstart

import { parse, stringify } from 'csv-parser';

const rows = parse('name,age\nAda,36\nBob,29', { coerce: 'auto' });
// [{ name: 'Ada', age: 36 }, { name: 'Bob', age: 29 }]

const csv = stringify(rows);
// "name,age\nAda,36\nBob,29"

Streaming

import { CsvStreamParser } from 'csv-parser';

const parser = new CsvStreamParser({ coerce: 'auto' });
for await (const chunk of readableStream) {
  parser.parseChunk(chunk); // returns rows completed by this chunk
}
parser.flush(); // finalize any trailing unterminated row
const allRows = parser.getResults();

parseChunk correctly handles a quoted field, delimiter, or newline split across chunk boundaries — you don't need to pre-buffer complete lines.

API

• parse(input, options?) — one-shot parse of a full CSV string.
  • options.delimiter — single-character field delimiter (default ,).
  • options.header — treat row 1 as a header; returns Record<string, value>[] when true (default), or string[][]/value[][] when false.
  • options.coerce — opt-in type coercion, off by default:
    • 'auto' — infer number / boolean (true/false) / null per field.
    • { columnName: 'number' | 'boolean' | 'null' | 'string' } — per-column coercion when header: true.
• stringify(rows, options?) — serialize Record<string, unknown>[] or unknown[][] back to CSV text, quoting any field that contains the delimiter, a ", or a newline. options.delimiter, options.header, options.newline ('\n' default or '\r\n').
• class CsvStreamParser<T> — incremental parser: parseChunk(text), flush(), getResults(). Constructor takes the same options as parse minus input.

Scope and limits

• This is a general-purpose CSV parser, not a schema-validation or data-pipeline library — type coercion is a flat auto/manual mapping, not a validation schema.
• delimiter must be exactly one character (matches RFC 4180 and most real-world CSV; it does not support multi-character delimiters).
• Fully blank lines are skipped rather than emitted as empty rows.
• No BOM stripping is performed — strip a leading UTF-8 BOM yourself if your source may include one.

Sponsored by Ferrow

Part of the ferrow-toolkit collection · Sponsored by Ferrow