Golang : Skip blank/empty lines in CSV file and trim whitespaces example

Problem:

Your Golang program is reading from a CSV file and you want to skip blank lines in the CSV file. Also, you want to trim whitespaces in the final output. How to do that?

Solution:

After initiating the csv.Read() or csv.NewReader() functions. Set the reader's FieldsPerRecord and TrimLeadingSpace to:

 csvReader.FieldsPerRecord = -1 // optional
 csvReader.TrimLeadingSpace = true

The CSV reader will automagically ignore those empty lines.

Here you go!

 package main

 import (
  "encoding/csv"
  "fmt"
  "io"
  "log"
  "strings"
 )

 func main() {
  csvDataWithEmptyLines := `first_name,last_name,username
 "Adam","Sandler", adam


 Steve, McQueen,steve
 "Robert","Spacey","robspacy"
 `
  csvReader := csv.NewReader(strings.NewReader(csvDataWithEmptyLines))

  // add these
  csvReader.FieldsPerRecord = -1
  csvReader.TrimLeadingSpace = true

  for {
 record, err := csvReader.Read()
 if err == io.EOF {
 break
 }
 if err != nil {
 log.Fatal(err)
 }

 fmt.Println(record)
  }
 }

Output:

// properly formatted and look nice

[firstname lastname username]

[Adam Sandler adam]

[Steve McQueen steve]

[Robert Spacey robspacy]

References:

https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/csv/#Reader