CSV-Import: auto-test for separation character: Semicolon

Any system for auto-detecting the delimiter would need to have a confirmation screen to make sure it has detected the delimiter correctly. Since that would require an extra page-load and extra click anyway, I think it would be better to simply copy Moodle and have an option for the user to say "semicolon" or "comma".

Or if we wanted to get fancy, have some Javascript attached to the file upload form, which examines the file, guesses the delimiter, and ticks the appropriate box on the form.

I don't see the necessity for a confirmation. The first line that defines the fields to import has a pretty strict syntax, we have a couple of fields that are required and we have a fixed set of fields that are valid. If one of the required fields is not identifiable or an invalid field appears, the import is canceled. So basically the first line of a valid input file can only contain semicolons or commas but never both. Or am I missing something?

Oh, good point. The first line has to be the column names, so it should indeed be pretty easy to tell whether they've used columns or semicolons.

Alright, fair enough, we could auto-detect pretty easily then. :)

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3992

Thanks for the confirmation :)

I added a patch, just checking for a comma or semicolon in the first line of the file with the column names. In my tests it worked well for User uploads and Group uploads.
I used an array for the separation characters to check just in case Microsoft uses yet another character in yet another language setting. If so it could be added easily.

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/3992
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/7be6438a3908e41ed8bafbc7a3e3361ee4a14274
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 7be6438a3908e41ed8bafbc7a3e3361ee4a14274
Author: Tobias Zeuch <email address hidden>
Date: Wed Nov 19 10:44:42 2014 +0100

Make CSV-Import autodetect delimiter

Bug 1393472: Automatically detect the delimiter used to store the fields in the
csv field. The problem this should solve is that Microsoft Excel uses a
semicolon instead of a comma if the language setting of Windows is set to
German.
The first line of the csv-file contains the header fields so we use that line
to check, if it contains a comma or a semicolon since none of these appears in
the header field names itself.

Change-Id: I833041eb2169fc5ccc9557e0debf3f03c8daf7cc
Signed-off-by: Tobias Zeuch <email address hidden>